


At the Dragon's Roar

by mille_libri



Series: Dragon [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-07-24 01:28:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 50,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7488045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mille_libri/pseuds/mille_libri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just as Ren Trevelyan and the Iron Bull are settling into life together on the Storm Coast, an old friend of his turns up dead, under circumstances which implicate Ren. As the Storm Coast trembles under an onslaught of earthquakes, Ren must prove her innocence and try to win her lover back from the Qun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. At Home

“Ah, _kadan_ , smell that air.”

Ren Trevelyan grinned, watching her lover as he breathed in deeply, filling his lungs with the salt tang of the ocean they had both longed for. 

They had been traveling for days to reach the Storm Coast, where they intended to settle now that they had retired from the Inquisition. Even though they were on no special timeline, they had both felt a need to hurry, as if, had they dawdled, the Inquisition might have reached out its long fingers and called them back.

It hadn’t, at least not so far, and now here they were hiking the rocky trails over the cliffs where they had first met. Ren trailed along a little behind the Iron Bull, admiring the play of the muscles in his back and shoulders as he moved. They had come together so naturally, drawn to one another almost from the start; she often took what they had for granted, something she vowed to fix now that she had the time to devote to him, rather than constantly being at the beck and call of the troubles of the world.

He turned to look at her over his shoulder. “Having trouble keeping up?”

“Never have, never will.”

“Good. This house of yours is just up that next cliff.”

She caught his hand, pulling him to a stop. “Ours,” she corrected him.

“You sure?”

“We’re together, aren’t we? What’s mine is yours.”

His face was troubled, his single grey eye boring into hers. “Yes, but you earned this, _kadan_. You were the Inquisitor.”

“But you did the fighting. I’d have died ten times over, at least, if I hadn’t had you in front of me everywhere I went.”

“I didn’t do that for the Inquisition.” His big hand stole out to cover her head, his thumb stroking her hair, a familiar gesture. 

“I know.” She reached up and touched the half of a dragon’s tooth he wore on a cord around his neck. The other half hung on a similar cord around her own, a symbol of their love for each other and their commitment to one another. Two halves of a whole. “And that’s why it’s yours as much as mine.”

They stood there for a moment looking at one another, before the Iron Bull pulled away. Ren let him go, contentedly resuming the climb behind him. Qunari didn’t believe in romantic love, and far as he had come from his people and the Qun, the moments when he was willing to be mushy and romantic were brief and rare. She didn’t mind, not really; she’d never been one for mush herself. And she knew how he felt about her. It was in every look, every touch, every time he stopped in the middle of sparring to show her a better grip or stance. 

The sun was beginning to sink behind the edges of the mountains, the air cooling with the receding light. But there ahead, framed by the red sky, was the little round house on the top of a cliff the Inquisition had deeded to Ren when she stepped down as Inquisitor.

Robert Morris, former quartermaster, had become the Inquisitor, and Fairbanks, whom Ren had first met in the Emerald Graves, was spymaster now that Leliana had become Divine. Skyhold was very different than it used to be—Ren should have been more sad to say good-bye, but so many of her former companions were gone now. 

“You think he’ll be all right?” the Iron Bull said abruptly.

“Who, Cole?”

“Yeah.”

She smiled at his back. He would never admit it, but he had come to love the former spirit. He hadn’t suggested Cole move to the Storm Coast with them, but Ren was fairly sure the thought had crossed his mind. “Varric will take care of him.” Varric had gone back to Kirkwall, and Cole had gone with him. There were plenty of people in pain there that a former spirit of compassion could help.

The Iron Bull grunted, unconvinced.

They climbed in silence for a few more minutes, at last reaching the ladder that would carry them up to their house. The Iron Bull stopped, his eye sweeping the ocean with satisfaction, before turning to her. 

She was looking out toward the sea, as well, the breeze ruffling her red hair, so beautiful, and he marveled again at all the changes that had come to his life—and to him—since he’d met her. Not that long ago, either, just a little over a year since he had first seen her come charging into combat with her daggers gleaming. And in that time he had joined the Inquisition, effectively giving up his leadership of the Chargers to Krem; he had made the momentous decision to leave the Qun behind when he had to choose between the Qun and his men; he had fallen in love with her, more deeply than he could ever have imagined he was capable of; and he had chosen to leave the Inquisition with her, to start a new life, just the two of them, a life he would never have dreamed of before. It was a lot to take in. And although he had never admitted it to her, sometimes he wondered if he had made the right choices. The life he lived now was so at odds with the way he had been raised to be, the way he had believed was right. He had no purpose, no goal. Sure, eventually they would rejoin the Chargers and he could get back to being a merc captain, but was that enough to build a life on?

Ren was looking up at him, her blue eyes soft and thoughtful. “Copper for your thoughts?”

He didn’t know what to tell her. She had been so glad to leave the Inquisition, so ready to move on with a life she had chosen, for the first time—he didn’t want to dim that happiness with his own conflicted thoughts. Instead of answering, he drew her close and threaded his fingers through her silky hair, tilting her head back so he could kiss her.

The Iron Bull had long ago lost count of the kisses, the touches, the number of times they had had sex, but he still found it astonishing how much he still wanted her even after all those countless times. Just the feel of her body against him and the touch of her lips were enough to calm his rising doubts. “Come on,” he said hoarsely. “That giant bed of yours is calling.”

Ren grinned. “In bed, really? The first time? Tsk tsk. I thought you were more inventive than that.”

He trapped her body between himself and the ladder, holding her there, pressing himself against the rounded curve of her rear. “Right here is sounding better and better.”

“Another time.” Hastily, Ren scrambled the rest of the way up the ladder. 

The house was just as she remembered it; maybe a little more weathered. Krem had had all their belongings delivered, and the Chargers had come out to set things up and reclaim their old camping grounds while Ren and the Iron Bull were in the Frostback Basin making friends with the Avvar, but no one had expected them today, and so everything was silent. No smoke rose from the chimney.

Unexpectedly, Ren found herself lifted into the air. The Iron Bull grinned down at her. “Tradition, right? Carrying you over the threshhold and all that?”

“That’s for a wedding night.”

He shrugged. “Close enough.”

Ren relaxed into his arms, resting her head against his chest. “If you say so.” This kind of thing had never been part of her fantasies, but she’d let him play at married couple if he wanted. 

Inside the house, he put her down, dropping his pack on the floor at his feet. Looking around, Ren followed suit. The Chargers had done well. Their books were shelved, their things neatly put away, the bed made up—her beautiful oversized bed, which she’d had made when she first became Inquisitor in hopes of sharing it with him. They’d made do without it since she stepped down, but both were looking forward to being able to stretch out again.

With a sigh, she flopped backward onto it, reveling in the softness beneath her.

The Iron Bull’s eye raked hotly over her body, and she arched into his gaze as if it were a tangible thing. He made an appreciative noise in the back of his throat, shedding his clothes hastily before attacking the laces on her hiking boots.

Ren lay there and let him undress her. His big fingers were surprisingly deft, and in no time the boots were off and he was working on her pants.

“I can never decide if I like these tight pants of yours or not. Sure, they make your ass look great, but they’re a pain to get off.”

“I know, you’d prefer me naked.”

“Damn straight I would.” He yanked the pants the rest of the way off. Ren’s legs parted as if of their own volition, drawing up to give him better access.

Without bothering to remove her smallclothes, he pressed his face against her, breathing her in, scraping his teeth lightly across her most sensitive spot. Ren cried out, her hips rising to get closer. She gripped his horns to hold him there.

He set to work on her in earnest, then, tugging the smallclothes down with his teeth before turning his lips and tongue to the serious business of her pleasure. When this had all started between them, it had been about her needs, about giving her a place where she didn’t have to be in charge, where someone else was taking care of her for a change. Now that she was no longer Inquisitor, the rules had changed along with her needs, but he still drew his greatest satisfaction from the sound and scent and taste of her at the peak of her arousal. Later, he would tease and torment, delaying the moment of ultimate satisfaction for her pleasure and for his, but now he was single-minded in his focus, driving her up the peak and then letting her come slowly down again.

Ren tugged on his horns to bring him up to her, feeling the weight of him settle fully on top of her. She sighed in contentment. 

The Iron Bull smiled at her. “Welcome home, Morvoren.”

No one had ever used her full given name before—her mother, whose idea the romantic name had been, died before Ren was old enough to remember her, and her father preferred her middle name, Alys. In his research on her before the Chargers joined the Inquisition, the Iron Bull had found the name and liked its music. On meeting her, he had found something in her eyes that made him feel the name and its meaning, mermaid, suited her. And for some reason, she had trusted him to do so—something about the way he said it made her feel that he saw her in a way no one before him ever had. In return, she had taken to calling him Ashkaari, the name given to him by the tamassran who raised him. It meant “one who thinks”, and in Ren’s opinion, suited him perfectly. 

She had sensed a concern growing in him, some thought process in the back of his mind that he had yet to share with her, and was trying to be patient and wait, knowing that pushing him would never work, but she couldn’t help but wonder what it was that was bothering him. 

For the moment, however, all those thoughts had been put aside. Nothing existed except what lay inside these round wooden walls—the two of them, and the life they intended to make together.

“Kiss me, Ashkaari.”

“My pleasure.”

Later, there would be unpacking to do, organizing, a trip down the cliff to the Chargers’ camp and to the local fishing village, swims in the ocean and hikes over the mountain, and one day, a jaunt across the bay to the little island where a High Dragon lay just waiting for them to challenge her. For now, they let the urgent need of their bodies take over and made love long into the night.


	2. Not Quite Paradise

The morning light was shafting across the room, the seagulls crying outside as they wheeled high above the ocean, when the Iron Bull awoke. Next to him, Ren stretched and then curled sleepily back up against his side. He waited a moment, watching her, then lifted her chin with two gentle fingers.

Her eyes opened. “Morning, already? I was having the best dream.” She smiled. “Oh, wait, it wasn’t a dream at all.”

“Livin’ the dream, _kadan_? All unemployed, resting on your laurels?”

“Not my laurels,” she protested. “Those belong to the Inquisition. And as for unemployed, I thought I was working for the chief of the Chargers, the biggest hardass in Thedas.”

He turned her over, resting his bulk on her in mock severity. “Biggest ass in Thedas, you said?”

“Sometimes.” Laughing, she pushed at him until he got up.

As she hunted for her clothes around the room and started straightening up, he watched her. After all this time, she still couldn’t take credit for everything she had done. Did she really believe she had left the Inquisitor behind when she left the Inquisition? The green mark on her hand should tell her otherwise; and her notoriety wasn’t going to go away. There were those who would worship her, those who would want to use her, and certainly those who would want to kill her. It was his job to protect her from all of them, as much as he could.

Ren turned to look at him. “You ready, or you going to lie there all day?”

He folded his arms under his head, lying back and stretching. “Well, since you work for me now, I figured you could bring me my—“ He stopped when his pants, rolled into a ball, bounced off his face.

“Not a chance. In fact, I’m leaving right now; if you’re lucky, you’ll be able to catch me.”

Of course, since his entire dressing procedure consisted of yanking on his pants, stepping into his beat-up boots, and grabbing his harness, she hadn’t gotten far by the time he came out of the house. He took a moment to breathe in the sea air—he’d missed it, away in the south far from any ocean.

“Took you long enough,” Ren grumbled when he caught up to her. He laughed and ruffled her hair.

The Chargers’ enthusiasm was loud and prolonged when they entered camp, and so was the insistence on tapping a keg in their honor. Presented with a mug of something Rocky called ale, which Ren knew from experience would have her flat on her back if she didn’t sip slowly and carefully, she begged for food, as well, and soon enough there was a full-on fish fry on the beach. Grim sat on the sand next to the upturned log Ren was using for a seat, tapping his foot to the music made by Rocky on a harmonica and Dalish with some kind of stringed instrument Ren had never seen before. Taciturn as always, Grim looked up at Ren speculatively every once in a while, and she wondered what he was thinking. 

A very drunk Skinner wobbled over to Ren, standing in front of her with her hands belligerently set on her hips. “Think you’re one of us now, do ya?”

“I … hope so?”

“Never happen.” The elf looked Ren up and down, sneering. “We don’t need no fancy rich shems comin’ ‘round and takin’ what’s ours.”

“What’s yours? You mean—“ Did Skinner have feelings for the Iron Bull? 

“I mean, we were a team before you. And then we lost the chief, and now we lost Krem, and it’s all down to you and that bloody stinking mark on your hand.”

Ren’s fist closed protectively around the Anchor. Even knowing what it was, she felt a possessiveness about it. It was part of her, something that gave her strength. “I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said, trying to remain calm, but the elf’s anger had her teetering on the edge between anger and tears.

Before Skinner could say anything more, two firm hands closed on her shoulders. “Come on, Skinner, let’s get you something to eat.” With an apologetic glance at Ren, Stitches hauled the elf away, deaf to her protests.

Grim had watched the whole scene with interest; now he got to his feet and walked away, leaving Ren sitting alone and feeling as though she had made a terrible mistake thinking she could be part of this little family of the Iron Bull’s. She took a deep breath, trying to get a grip on herself. She was used to being the one everyone surrounded, of course—her companions, the Inquisition, her advisors. Probably it had given her a swelled opinion of the way other people saw her. And probably the Chargers viewed her as a threat; as Skinner had said, the Iron Bull had left them to join the Inquisition. He had left them for her, and he still hadn’t really come back, as the two of them intended to take an extended vacation before getting back to work. They really had no reason to trust her, or to welcome her with open arms.

“Don’t mind them,” Rocky said. He clinked his mug against hers. “They’ll get used to you eventually.”

“I hope so. I don’t intend to go anywhere.”

“I think it’s weird, seeing the chief with someone the way he’s with you. Never thought Qunari did that.”

“They don’t.”

Rocky nodded. “See? A person can get used to anything, even something he didn’t grow up with. Look at me, living up here in the sky. I grew up thinking you’d fall off if you came up here, and turns out, you’re stuck just as firm to the ground as I was in Orzammar.”

“You … wanted to fall off the earth?”

“Well, not permanently. But it would’ve been nice to try it once,” he said wistfully.

Ren smiled. “I can see that.”

Things settled down a bit after that, and Ren tried to get to know the rest of the Chargers, the ones who weren’t in the Iron Bull’s inner circle. She had been a merc before—she’d run away from home in her teens to join a mercenary company with her first lover, her father’s captain of the guard, and when he was killed, had stayed on with the mercenaries. This felt like that, the camaraderie, the crude humor, the hard drinking to go along with the hard fighting. Was she really ready for this life again? 

She missed Dorian, and Varric, their witty banter, their high intelligence, their steadfast loyalty and affection. But Varric was in Kirkwall and Dorian, though still nominally with the Inquisition, was making more and more noises about returning to Tevinter. 

Ren would simply have to make friends among the Chargers, she told herself, and here on the coast.

In the midafternoon, they left the Chargers’ camp, walking along the beach together. “Skinner give you some trouble?”

“No, not really.”

“Uh-huh.”

“They’re protective of you, Ashkaari. Can’t blame them for that.”

“Still, though.”

“She’ll come around, sooner or later.” Ren shrugged. “Or she won’t.” She looked up at him. “You and Dalish figure out what they’re going to do until you and Krem are both ready to come back on board?” Krem and Ren’s former assistant Flissa had been married the night Ren and the Iron Bull left Skyhold; they were on a honeymoon in Orlais.

“Couple of jobs around here, she said. Small stuff, nothing they can’t handle.”

Ren narrowed her eyes, studying his sharp-featured dragon’s face. “You want to go back?”

He gave a single decisive shake of the head. “Nope.” Reaching out, he draped an arm around her shoulders. “I want you all to myself for as long as I can have you.”

“That’s a long time.”

“Good.” He stopped, pulling her around to face him. His hands reached for the buttons on her shirt. “You, me, ocean … seems like a good time to get you all wet.” His voice dropped on the last few words, underscoring the double entendre.

Ren shivered, moving closer, already imagining his hands on her wet breasts as they floated in the water. Still … “Someone might see,” she protested weakly.

“See what?” he murmured, fingers already deftly working the buttons open. “See you naked? Lucky them.” His mouth moved along the side of her neck, teeth scraping just hard enough to contrast with the soft touches of his tongue. “See me making you scream with pleasure?”

“Ashkaari.” She let her head fall back as his hands moved farther down, working her clothes off her piece by piece. When they were both naked, he lifted her and carried her out into the water, the waves swirling around his powerful body.

The water was cold at first as he submerged them both in it, but the chill was soon forgotten in the feverish heat of his hands on her, the tang of salt from the ocean adding a strange sweetness to their kisses. Ren let her body float, arching her back, leaving herself open to the sun and her lover’s hands and mouth.

And then he tugged her back under the water with him, her legs wrapping as far around his waist as they could go while he positioned himself.

Ren gave herself up to sensation, the steady ebb and flow of his movements inside her and of the water all around them, the chill of the ocean against the heat in her blood. When his climax struck, he threw back his head and bellowed like a bull, and Ren shuddered against him, the waves of pleasure racking her body with their force.

They floated together for a while, content to rock with the movement of the water. At last Ren sighed, kissing his shoulder. “Satisfactory?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You guess?” She frowned at him.

The Iron Bull grinned. “I might need to try a few more times and see if we can perfect it.”

“Oh. Good point.” She looked toward their clothes, still piled on the beach. “I can’t say I’m all that excited about putting those sandy clothes on without a chance to dry off.”

He shrugged. “Worth it, though.” ‘Worth it’ hardly touched the experience. He’d used fantasies of just this kind of thing to get himself off more than once since they made this plan, but the reality had blown the fantasies away. He was a lucky man, he thought, watching Ren’s gorgeous backside as she swam toward the shore.

The difficulties of dry clothes on wet skin were worse for her than for him—all his clothes were baggy enough to pull on pretty easily. Ren took a bit longer getting ready before she felt presentable enough to head for the fishing village. They would need to buy some supplies and have those hauled up in the morning. 

Ren had no haggling abilities whatsoever; she had grown up with money, had been taken under the wing of her merc captain and his girl when she joined them, and went straight on to the Inquisition from there, so she had never had to worry about money. And the Inquisition’s settlement on her retirement had been more than generous, so she had a tendency to throw it around to get things done when she got impatient with the haggling, which she did quickly. The Iron Bull gently suggested she take a walk and let him handle it, and from there the ordering of supplies and the arrangements to have them delivered on a regular basis went much more smoothly.

As he was leaving the baker’s shop, he heard a familiar voice, one he had never expected to hear again, and stopped in his tracks.

“Well, if it isn’t the Iron Bull. How’s that Inquisition of yours treating you? Or, should I say, that Inquisitor of yours?”

Ren saw him at the same time, and her heart sank. Gatt. The Iron Bull’s friend and contact, who had been the one to deliver the news that her Ashkaari was Tal-Vashoth. It had taken him a long time to get over the humiliation, if he had at all. Sometimes she thought he still burned over the name, and had just buried that down deep where no one could get at it.

“Gatt.” The Iron Bull tensed, ready to move, but which way he wasn’t sure. Would the danger be to him, or to Ren?

“Don’t be so jumpy. We sent our men, you tossed them over the wall, we’re all good.”

“Really. Just like that,” the Iron Bull said skeptically. Part of him wanted to believe it was true. He and Gatt had been friends for a long time; it rankled in him that things had ended so badly. Ren believed Gatt had set him up, purposefully put him in a position where he would be forced to choose the Qun over the Chargers and his life with them, but the Iron Bull doubted it. That was the way he thought, but it was too circuitous for the Qun. The Qun was straightforward. It didn’t tell lies or trap people.

“Just like that.” Gatt smiled. “Everyone got what they wanted in the end, didn’t they? The world was saved, the Vints sent packing, and now you’re free to roll around in the lap of luxury with your … woman there.”

Ren hadn’t missed the pause, and she wondered what word he would have preferred to put. She doubted it would have been complimentary.

“So this is, what? A social visit?” the Iron Bull asked.

“More or less. Wanted to check up on you, make sure you went where you said you would.” Gatt nodded his head. “I volunteered, figured I could buy you a drink. Old times and all that.”

“Yeah? There a good place to get a drink around here?”

“Come with me.”

The Iron Bull looked up and met Ren’s eyes. “ _Kadan_ , you in?”

“I want to do some shopping. Girl stuff.” She winked at him. “You know. You boys go ahead without me. Save me half a barrel.”

“Will do.”

Gatt nodded at her, his expression completely neutral, and the two of them sauntered down the main street of the village together. Ren watched them go, a nameless dread clutching at her heart. The Qunari had let him go … but reluctantly. Was Gatt here to get him back, to bring the Iron Bull back to the Qun? Would he want to go?

She turned and looked out over the sea. It was beautiful, the sight and sound of it loved and familiar and homelike … but it clearly was not going to be paradise.


	3. Shaky Ground

After that first day, Gatt became a regular part of their lives. He met them in the fishing village, or he dropped by for a drink at sunset, or they ran into him while walking along the beach.

He was relentlessly cheerful, breezily insisting that bygones were bygones, that with the Breach closed the Qunari had retreated to a “hide and watch” position where southern Thedas was concerned, and most importantly of all, that he respected the Iron Bull’s decision to “kick back and relax with his honey”, as Gatt put it.

Ren couldn’t help but notice a disconcerted expression cross her lover’s face the first time this phrase came up, and she was sure Gatt had noticed it, too, given the frequency with which he reused it afterward.

When it came to her, Gatt was unfailingly polite and respectful. Any barbs were so subtle that Ren was left having to wonder if she had imagined them … and thus unable to say anything without looking paranoid.

He came over for a game of cards one evening. Ren and the Iron Bull were in mid-thrust when he knocked on the door, and she couldn’t help but wonder if he had waited until their cries had reached a desperate pitch before announcing his presence. Probably she should have felt guilty for thinking such things of Ashkaari’s old friend … but she didn’t. He might not have given her any hint that he was bent on carrying out some nefarious plan, but she didn’t trust him anyway. Never had, never would.

The Iron Bull couldn’t help but groan at Gatt’s maladroit timing. Bastard had probably waited until just then to be funny. It was pretty funny, really, the two of them caught at it, calling out “just a minute” in voices thick with passion, fooling Gatt not at all.

And sure enough, there was a smirk in Gatt’s green eyes. “I didn’t catch you at a bad time, did I?”

The Iron Bull punched him in the arm. “You know you did, you asshole.”

Morvoren rolled her eyes, but said nothing. It was obvious she didn’t trust Gatt, but she was keeping quiet about it, for which the Iron Bull was grateful.

There was a low rumble, like distant thunder, and Gatt looked up at the sky. “Doesn’t look like a storm, but what do you say we play inside tonight, just in case?”

“Fine with me.” The Iron Bull led the way. Instead of clearing the table, he balled up the tablecloth with all the dishes bundled inside it. Easier that way, and they could just dunk the whole mess in the ocean later.

“You big lug,” Morvoren said affectionately. “You boys start without me, I’ll take care of that.” She took the bundle and started cleaning up. The Iron Bull could tell it was a ploy to keep from having to spend time with Gatt, and he wondered how long it would be before she could relax. Not that he blamed her, entirely, given what had happened with Gatt before ... but people changed.

He shuffled and dealt, Gatt’s eyes sharp on the deck of cards the whole time. “Hey, I don’t cheat! … Much.”

“Yeah, that’s the part that worries me, the ‘much’.”

They grinned at each other. “Remember that card game in Par Vollen, with Nott and Asab?”

“Could I forget it? You had half the cards stuffed in your harness, and you kept pretending to cough and bending over to get one.”

“And Nott was sure I’d been poisoned and kept asking if I wanted a glass of water.” They both laughed at the memory. The Iron Bull couldn’t help thinking about those days, about the friends he had left behind when he turned himself in to the reeducators. “Where are they, anyway?”

“Dead.” Gatt looked somberly at his cards, offering no further detail.

“Damn.” He wanted to ask … but he didn’t, either. Seheron hadn’t gotten any better, he was sure, and the Vints had become more arrogant with Corypheus’s encouragement. He felt a stab of guilt—he should have stayed. He’d been better at his job than anyone who’d come before him, kept Seheron quieter. He should have had the endurance to keep doing it, to fight for his people. Instead, he’d run, and now look at him.

Behind him, he heard the clink of dishes, reminding him of where he had ended up. A few days ago, this had seemed like the only life worth living. Wasn’t it still? He got up. “’Scuse me.”

Ren heard the door close. She glanced at Gatt, who was riffling through Ashkaari’s hand. “Everything all right?”

“Sure. Shouldn’t it be?”

There was no good answer to that. Ren followed Ashkaari outside. Another rumble sounded; it almost felt like the ground was moving under her feet. The sky was still clear, but with thunder like that, they would be looking at quite the storm coming in. Ashkaari was standing on the edge of the cliff, looking out over the water. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Everything all right?”

“Yeah. Just … some friends of mine from Par Vollen are dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.” He looked down at her, his face unusually closed-off, and then away.

Ren was fairly sure she could follow his thought processes. “You’re thinking, if you had only stayed …”

“Pretty much.”

“Ashkaari.” She reached up to touch his face, relieved to see his features soften. “Seheron nearly broke you, remember? You woke up and couldn’t think of a single reason to do your job, that’s what you said. If you had stayed, you would have died.”

“I should have been stronger. If I had pushed through that feeling, stayed a little longer—“

“You can only be who you are. You knew it was time to step away; that’s why you went to the re-educators.” It was on the tip of her tongue to blame Gatt for this sudden attack of self-doubt, but something told her that would only backfire. “You can’t know what would have happened—but staying when you weren’t at the top of your game would have endangered all of you.”

“Yeah.” He gave a deep sigh. “I know.” Catching her fingers, he brought them to his lips. “And I wouldn’t have met you.”

“Which would have been a tragedy for me.” She smiled at him. “I’m sure I would have died a dozen times over if you hadn’t been there.”

“At least,” he agreed. Hand in hand, they went back to the cabin.

Gatt was resuming his seat as they came in, and Ren’s eyes immediately flitted around the room, looking for anything out of place. She couldn’t find anything, and he immediately claimed that he had been about to come looking for them, so accusing him of snooping would only have made her sound churlish. She resolved to look over the place when he was gone. With anyone else, she would only have had to look at Ashkaari, and he would have known just what they had touched, but he had a blind spot where Gatt was concerned.

The Iron Bull and Gatt settled back to their card game, and Ren went to finish putting away the dishes, and another rumble came. This time, there was no doubt that the ground shook beneath them. 

“What the fuck?” The Iron Bull got to his feet, bracing himself against the movement. It went on for a few minutes, and then stopped. 

Ren looked swiftly at Gatt, but he appeared to be as genuinely confused as she and the Iron Bull were. 

They all went outside, looking around. The house still stood, and nothing had fallen off the shelves, but looking farther off into the distance, they could see toppled trees and fallen rocks. “I should get back,” Gatt said.

Against her own inclination, Ren protested, “It might not be safe. You don’t know if another quake is coming.”

“I’ll be careful. Thanks for your concern, though.” He offered her a smile that to all appearances looked genuine, but Ren still didn’t trust it.

There were several more rumbles that night. The next day, Ren and the Iron Bull went to check on the Chargers, stopping by the village on their way. The buildings were still standing, but a market stall had collapsed, and a couple of people had fallen and suffered injuries. Ren saw Gatt at the end of the street talking to the baker. Their heads were together, their body language suggesting they were having a private conversation. She was relieved that at least today she wouldn’t have him as the third wheel.

They went on to the Chargers’ camp, where everyone had a lot of questions and no one had any answers. The Iron Bull was frustrated, but intrigued at the same time. This odd quake was something different, something to put his brain to work on, and he needed that.

He could see Skinner and Rocky whispering furiously at one another. Rocky kept gesturing at Morvoren, and Skinner kept shaking her head. Eventually, Rocky turned the elf around and gave her a little shove, and she moved unwillingly in the direction of the former Inquisitor.

The Iron Bull understood the reluctance—the Chargers didn’t know where his _kadan_ was going to fit in, what part she was going to take in the hierarchy. Skinner and Morvoren both fought with two daggers, and so they could have been expected to have something in common, but it seemed that the elf felt threatened and worried that she, specifically, was going to be replaced. He could have stepped in to try to fix the situation, but he thought it would go better if Morvoren handled it herself.

Skinner stopped in front of Ren, her head hanging down. She muttered something.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you,” Ren said, wishing they could just skip this awkwardness.

“Sorry,” Skinner said a bit more loudly.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.”

The elf glared at her, and Ren wondered if there was anything she could have said that would have been better. 

“Those are nice knives,” she said, gesturing at the bone handles sticking up from Skinner’s scabbards.

“Blades are chipped.”

“Oh. Sounds like you could use some new ones.”

Skinner nodded. “Maybe. Nothing for sale around here, though.” She continued glaring at Ren, as though somehow it was her fault.

“I’m sure the Iron Bull would give you leave to—“ Ren let it go when Skinner’s glare didn’t waver. “But you know that.”

“Anyway. Sorry.” Skinner turned away. “Happy now?” she asked Rocky loudly.

The dwarf sighed. “I’m sorry, Inqui—Ren. Damn, we need to get you a nickname. Anyway, she’ll come around. Give her time.”

“You think … I’ve got a pair of daggers that were sent to me by a noblewoman in Nevarra. Nice blades, runes carved into the handles and everything, but I never used them because I was used to my others. You think if I gave her those?”

Rocky shrugged. “Could help. Or she could think you were a patronizing bitch rubbing in her face the fact that you have all this stuff and she doesn’t. With Skinner, you never know.”

“So … you think I shouldn’t do it?”

“Oh, no, you should. Just … step back after you hand them to her. Out of range, you know.”

“Right. Got it. Thanks, Rocky.” 

“Any time.”

She rejoined Ashkaari, who had been asking about the earthquake and getting no useful answers. 

When they reached their cabin, a raven was perched above the door, tapping against the wood with its beak.

“What the—oh.” The Iron Bull frowned. “It’s barely been a week. Can’t they get along without you for a week?”

Ren smiled, holding out her hand to the bird. “You flatter me, but really, there’s nothing I can do that Morris can’t. I’m sure we just forgot something.” The raven fluttered over to her, lighting on her arm, and she unrolled the message from around its leg.

She was frowning as she read it, and the Iron Bull felt a chill. Just when he thought she was safe, far from all that fighting … “What’s it say?”

“It says that Orzammar has asked for the Inquisition’s help.”

“The quake?”

“Exactly. Apparently it wasn’t the first, just the biggest. They’ve lost a couple of lyrium mines, and they’re panicking.”

“Can’t blame them—a few days lost lyrium revenue could seriously harm Orzammar’s finances.”

Ren sighed. “Yeah, that seems to be the basic problem. No mention of the miners.”

“Poor sods. So why’s this an Inquisition thing?”

“I’m guessing infrastructure. The dwarves want to build a mining lift here on the Storm Coast, but their miners can’t come to the surface, so they’ve asked the Inquisition to help, and the Inquisition is asking me if I’ll keep an eye on the operation, since I’m here.” She looked up at him. “Seems harmless enough.”

“It always does. That’s how they get you.”

She smiled. “Maybe. But I’ll do it. Wait here,” she said to the raven, who returned to its perch above the door. Hastily, she wrote a note back to Morris, rolled it around the raven’s leg, and saw the bird off on its return trip. Then she remembered the daggers she wanted to give Skinner, and dug through the box she was sure they had been packed in.

Eventually, she found one, but not the other. Sitting back on her heels, she frowned thoughtfully. She had absolutely packed them together; she was sure of that. And the box was intact, so nothing could have fallen out. Krem and Flissa wouldn’t have gone through her box, and it had been here the whole time.

“What’s the trouble?” 

“One of my daggers is missing. You know, those runed ones from Nevarra?”

“Oh, yeah. What’re you looking for that for?”

“I was going to give them to Skinner.”

“That’s a good idea.” He frowned. “Where do you think the other one went?”

Ren bit back the reply that rose to her lips, but he must have read it in her face, because he swore violently.

“I fucking knew it. You think Gatt’s been in here taking a fucking knife? Like he wouldn’t ask if he needed something.”

“I didn’t say that’s what I thought,” Ren protested, but the Iron Bull snorted.

“You didn’t have to. I can read your face like an open book. You don’t trust him.”

“Fine. I don’t trust him. And if you weren’t so blinded by rose-colored memories, you wouldn’t, either!” she said, getting to her feet.

“About time you said something. If you rolled your eyes any harder, they would have fallen out.”

“Because every word that comes out of his fucking mouth is a lie!”

“You don’t know that.” 

Ren said, “I don’t believe you’re falling for this! Don’t you remember what happened here last time? He set you up! He set up the Chargers! He was going to let them die.”

“Instead, a whole lot of good men were killed by the fucking Vints, that’s what I remember. Gatt couldn’t have known there were going to be so many.”

“Of course he could have! If you had been in charge of reconnaissance for that mission, you’d have counted every last damn Vint, and then you’d have counted them again to make sure. Gatt got caught like an amateur. Is Gatt an amateur?”

She was right. Some part of him knew she was right. Gatt should have known, and there was no excuse for his sloppiness. But … he was also the only connection the Iron Bull had to everything he had known most of his life. The idea of turning Gatt away sent a shaft of ice through his chest, a … yes, a fear that if he cut this last tie, he would never truly be a Qunari again, that he’d be closing forever a door that he was so unexpectedly peeking through again. “You’re just jealous because you don’t have me to yourself any more.”

“No! … I mean, okay, yes, that’s part of it,” Ren said softly. “Yes, I wanted you all to myself. I thought—I thought you wanted that, too.”

“I do.” He opened his arms, and she came into them, holding on tight. “I do, _kadan_. But—I want this, too.”

“I know you do. And I’ll try harder to … give him the benefit of the doubt,” she said, but neither of them were sure that she could.

“Let’s go inside,” the Iron Bull said instead, lifting her in his arms.

They made love, but for the first time since they’d arrived on the Coast they slept on their own sides of the bed instead of cuddled together in the middle, and they both lay awake long into the night.


	4. The Dagger

The morning light was bright across the covers as the Iron Bull lay on his side, his head propped up on his hand, watching his _kadan_ sleep. She looked younger in sleep, softer, less determined to prove to everyone from her father onward that she could handle anything life threw at her. He liked her bravery—it was one of the things that had drawn him to her from the beginning—but he liked this side, too, the side of her he knew no one else had ever been allowed to see.

He had drawn that out of her, given her the freedom and the confidence to be more than her father’s wayward, rebellious daughter, and he felt a tremendous pride in the woman she was becoming.

As if she felt the weight of his gaze, she stirred, opening her eyes and looking up at him, the dark lashes framing the clear blue of her eyes. “Hey.”

“Hey, yourself. Thought you were about to sleep the day away.”

“You kept me up half the night,” she reminded him, with a sleepy smile and a contented stretch that said she didn’t really mind. Their argument over Gatt several nights ago wasn’t forgotten, but neither of them had brought the topic up again since.

“Seems to me you used to be able to keep up with me. Am I wearing you out, _kadan_?”

“Not a chance.” To prove it, she rolled on top of him, kissing him with a sweet familiarity that had him stirring in both heart and body. When Morvoren pulled away to look at him, he reached for the half dragon’s tooth that hung around her neck, rubbing his thumb over the runes again. 

“Kiss me again,” he whispered. He had held off from kissing her for a long time at the beginning of their activities together, afraid of what that would mean, afraid of what that intimate touch of tongues would reveal about his growing feelings for her and the confusion they created in him. Now he held her mouth to his fiercely, unable to get enough of the softness and heat of her, the boldness of the way she chased his tongue back into his mouth and the willingness with which she accepted his in turn.

As their mouths played, his hands found the satiny skin of her sides, tracing the curve of her hips and the delicate indentations between her ribs, at last finding her heavy breasts and cupping them, knowing just how much pressure she liked, just how much of the sharp scrape of a fingernail.

Under his practiced touch she was moving, twisting her hips, rubbing herself across him as he swelled against her. Slowly they slid together, groaning with pleasure into each other’s mouth as they rocked their hips. 

Their breath came in harsh pants as their movements sped up, the peak gloriously in reach. “Ah, come for me, Morvoren,” he whispered, his voice rough, and she ground herself hard against him and cried out her pleasure, her eyes fluttering closed as her body shook in his arms. Watching her, knowing what he did to her, was enough to send him over the edge in his own turn, and it was her turn to hold him as he called her name.

They lay together contentedly for a long time, Ren’s head on Ashkaari’s chest, listening to the beat of his heart and rising and falling with the movement of his breathing.

“We should get up,” he said at last, reluctantly.

“You have big plans for the day?”

“I have big plans for breakfast. Keeping you satisfied takes a lot of work.”

Ren grinned, getting off him. “Poor thing. One woman too much for you? And here you used to take on three or four in a night, to hear the stories.”

He didn’t miss those days at all. He had thought he might; after all, he was the Iron Bull, his prowess well-known, and his tastes wide and varied. But until he’d met this woman, he had never truly made love, never known what it was to be wanted for everything that he was, and to want someone else that way in return. While he wouldn’t necessarily have objected if Morvoren wanted to add someone else to their bed occasionally, all he really needed, wanted, was her.

Not moving from the bed, he watched her dress. She turned around and found him still lounging there. “I suppose you want me to go get the water? Maybe catch you some fish?”

He gave an exaggerated yawn. “Well, I did just rock your world, so I think it’s only fair …”

“Fair would be admitting that the rocking was mutual,” Ren grumbled, but she grinned at him, too. “Fine. You can stir up the fire so I have something to cook the fish on.”

“If you insist.”

She left, and he lay there a while longer, enjoying the comfortable bed beneath him and the sounds and scents of the ocean, before getting up to get dressed and stir the fire. She seemed to be taking a remarkably long time, he thought at one point. Usually there were fish handy for the spearing in their particular cove; it rarely took very long.

A feeble tapping came at the door, and he went to open it. “What, are your hands full?”

What he saw on the other side horrified him: Gatt, frothy blood bubbling on his lips. “Hissrad,” he said, the word little more than a puff of air, before he fell forward into the Iron Bull’s arms. Buried deep in his back, probably in the lung, was Ren’s missing dagger.

“Gatt. Come on, buddy. We’ll get you inside, we’ll get you some water …” He thought about cleaning the wound, about removing the dagger and cauterizing the entry site to stem the blood … but if there was already air and blood in the lungs, and there was, because now Gatt was wheezing and bringing up more of the bubbling mess, that was pretty much the end. Unless he could get to a healer. Stitches? He could carry Gatt that far, he thought.

“Hissrad?”

“I’m here.”

“I—“

And that was the end. The light went out of Gatt’s eyes as the Iron Bull had seen it go out of the eyes of entirely too many of his comrades and associates, his friends, in the course of his life. Only then did he stop to think about the implications of Ren’s dagger in his old friend’s back, and that was when the door burst open and Ren came in, staggering under the weight of the water bucket and the string of fish.

“Sorry that took so long; I ran into Rocky and Stitches and Grim and they were talking—well, not Grim, because—“ She stopped short, dropping the bucket and the fish on the floor at the sight in front of her. “What—what …?”

“You tell me,” the Iron Bull said grimly. He got to his feet, laying Gatt’s body gently aside. “You were suspicious of him all along, isn’t that what you said?”

“What? Suspicious of him doesn’t mean I wanted him dead!” She looked up at him, her clear blue eyes so confused and so innocent. 

She didn’t have the skill to deceive him, he told himself with the part of his mind that was still thinking rationally. But a great rage was taking hold of him, the edges of his vision growing black with it, and he couldn’t hold on to the thought. “Your dagger, the one you accused him of stealing. Explain that.”

“I can’t, obviously. Ashkaari—“

“Don’t call me that.”

Ren looked as though he had struck her. “I didn’t do this. You have to know I didn’t do this.”

“I know you never wanted him here,” he said doggedly. “I know you didn’t trust him. I know you were jealous of him. Is that why you did it, to have me all to yourself? What was your plan, Morvoren?”

“ _You_ don’t call _me_ that. Not in that tone,” she said, her voice shaking. She backed up a step. “I didn’t have a plan, because I didn’t do this.” She had never seen him like this before—all of the intelligence, the careful thought you could always see going on behind that single grey eye of his, all of it was gone, and what remained was a figure of pure wrath, seeming to grow taller and larger with every step he took toward her.

Her back was to the wall now. There was nowhere further she could go—he was between her and the door, and from the grim satisfaction in his eye, he had planned it that way. “Please,” she whispered. “Think about this.”

The Iron Bull’s hand closed on her throat, pinning her to the wall.

Ren willed herself to remain calm, to stay relaxed. He wouldn’t hurt her. She believed that. Whatever was happening here, he wouldn’t hurt her.

“Tell me the truth, or I will,” he said to her, his voice low and dangerous and dark. 

For once, she didn’t find him sexy at all—she found him terrifying. But at the same time, she knew him. She trusted him. “You won’t,” she said softly.

“How do you know? I could, easily.”

“I know you could. But if you thought I did this—if you honestly believed it—I’d already be dead.”

They stared at each other for a moment, Ren’s gaze open and as fearless as she could make it, the Iron Bull’s dark and clouded.

And then he stepped back, releasing her throat, and Ren tried not to breathe a sigh of relief. “We’ll find out who did this together,” she said.

“No. You stay away from him. And from me.”

“But—“ She didn’t know what to say to him. Suddenly the man she loved, the person she understood so thoroughly, was a stranger. Ren wondered if this was the man he had been on Seheron, the one who had kept the island in line for such a long time.

“It was a mistake ever to turn my back on the Qun. I’m going back to it,” the Iron Bull said flatly. 

If he was thinking at less than his usual speed, Ren was thinking at twice hers. In this mood, she couldn’t argue with him, and he was never one to respond to begging. Even in bed, begging often meant fulfillment took much longer than it would have otherwise. No, whatever happened today, if she was going to save this—and she was determined to—she had to be calm, she had to be confident, and above all, she had to let him go.

“If that’s what you want,” she said, and was pleased to hear her voice sounding rational.

He glanced at her sideways, evidently not having expected that. “I’ll be back when I know why you did it.”

“I’ll find you when I know who really did it,” she countered.

“Then I guess that’s where we stand.” He lifted Gatt’s body, balancing it over his shoulder, and he walked out.

Ren was left standing there stunned in the midst of the mess of water and fish, the wreck of her dreams. For a long time after he left, she couldn’t seem to move, and her clarity of thought had entirely deserted her. What would she do now? How did she even begin to find out what had happened to Gatt? She supposed at least she was starting off with an advantage; she, at least, knew she hadn’t done anything. But … who had?

Under other circumstances, she might have wept. But this required action; it required her to keep her head about her. It required … help. She needed help.

Stepping outside, she raised a small runed whistle Dagna had given her, and blew on it. Shortly afterward, a raven flew out of the woods toward her, lighting easily on her shoulder. Ren tied a brief note to its leg and sent it back on its way before returning to the house. 

She cleaned up the fish, mopped up the water, and bundled all the Iron Bull’s things together and put them in a bag outside the door. 

That was the hardest part. She found herself blinking back tears many times in the process, longing for his presence and terrified of what the future might hold for her without him.

As she set the bag down and straightened up, her hand went to the half of a dragon’s tooth that hung around her neck, and only then did she realize that when he had left, he was still wearing his. Surely that meant there was hope, she told herself. She couldn’t allow herself to think any other way.


	5. What If

The Iron Bull carried Gatt’s body down the mountain, slung over his shoulder. It wasn’t the first time he’d carried a dead body, but it had been a long time. Every shift of the weight, every slide of Gatt’s lifeless hands against his back increased his anger and guilt. If he had stayed in the Qun, this would never have happened, he told himself. If he hadn’t taken up with a southern woman …

But he couldn’t think about her right now, not with any kind of clarity. The web of rage and desire and love and disappointment and betrayal and longing that filled him was beyond his capability to push through without miring himself down in one emotion or another. At least, for now.

He directed his steps to a cave on the tip of the coast. Giant spiders had made their home there, and long ago he and Ren and Dorian and Blackwall had cleared darkspawn out of it as well—but the Inquisition soldiers had cleansed it of taint, so it should be reasonably safe now. Spiders didn’t bother him too much, at least not the big ones. It was the little ones, the ones you couldn’t see until they bit you and you were dead, that scared the Iron Bull. 

There were still torches affixed to the walls of the cave, and tapers to light them with secured on a ledge in the rock. Lighting the torches, he took care of the few spiders that tried to attack him, and then cleared spiderwebs and debris from a flat stone, laying Gatt’s body down on it. 

He bent over, studying the wound. The dagger had loosened a bit in Gatt’s back in the process of moving the body, but it remained embedded in the flesh. Between two ribs, at an upward angle, into the lung, the Iron Bull judged. No hesitation—whoever had struck the blow had been sure of the location, sure of the angle, sure that they wanted to strike. That suggested it hadn’t been a blow struck in anger, but one taken deliberately by someone who wanted Gatt to die. 

But why in the back? And if in the back, why in the lung—why not farther to the left in the heart? Why not through the neck, or in the spine? For that matter, why hadn’t Gatt fought back? The single wound created by Morvoren’s dagger was the only sign of violence on the body. There were no scratches on his hands that would suggest he had fought back.

The Iron Bull frowned. So that would mean Gatt had let someone walk up behind him with a dagger in their hand. It could have been hidden, he supposed, but it was hard to draw a dagger and strike so precisely without drawing attention to what you were doing. Although he knew a few who could do it. Morvoren. Skinner. Cole.

Where was the kid, anyway? Kirkwall? Maybe he could help, do that weird spirit mind reading thing he did and tell the Iron Bull just what had happened, why someone he had trusted had suddenly become a cold-blooded backstabber. 

It was that part that bothered the Iron Bull the most, the backstabbing. If Ren and Gatt had gotten into an argument and she’d stabbed him that way, he could have understood; Gatt would have had a fair chance to defend himself. But this—this had no honor.

He looked the body over thoroughly, and when he was done, he used a broken-handled shovel he had found abandoned in the cave to dig a shallow grave. No doubt animals would get to the body eventually, but that was okay; the Qun didn’t care about the body when the soul was gone.

That night, as he lay on the flat stone, missing his bed and his lover and the life that he had almost had, and berating himself for the longing even as his heart ached, the earth rumbled below him again, a low throb that he could feel through the stone. The Inquisition had been building a lift down into the earth—he and Morvoren had gone to watch them get it started, and she had been taking reports from the job foreman on behalf of the Inquisition and relaying those reports back to Skyhold by raven. They weren’t finished, though, and he thought about the people deep in the earth, digging the tunnel and constructing the lift. Would these rumblings put them in danger?

He wondered if it was now his responsibility to report back to the Qun what the Inquisition was working on. If he was going to rejoin the Qun, they would want him to come back to Par Vollen and be reeducated again; clearly he couldn’t handle being Ben-Hassrath, not given how easily he had been drawn from the Qun in his guise as hedonistic merc captain. But he couldn’t go, not yet, not until he knew what had happened to Gatt. He owed that to the Qun, and to Gatt himself. 

Or so he told himself. Part of him understood that true obedience to the Qun would mean returning now, putting his fate into the hands of others, for the greater good. The Qunari asked no vengeance, no answers. Men died, more men came to fill their places. And for that matter, no doubt the Ben-Hassrath already had someone placed within the Inquisition to tell them what it was doing.

He sat up, burying his head in his hands. He had to know. Regardless of the ultimate dictates of the Qun, he had to know what had happened to Gatt, what Morvoren had done and why. He could never rededicate himself fully to the Qun while that question hung in the air, waiting to be answered.

Crossing his legs, he closed his eye and sat there, thinking through the problem, until his weariness overcame him at last.  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  
Ren also spent the following day thinking about Gatt’s death. She hadn’t done it; but someone wanted it to seem that she had. They had gone to a lot of trouble to purloin her dagger, and she had to assume that it was so it could be used in Gatt’s killing. Which meant that someone really hated her.

Of course, she was the former Inquisitor—a lot of people hated her. But who hated Gatt, too? She wished the Iron Bull had given her a chance to look at the body. As it was, she had only seen Gatt’s body from a distance, and mostly with an obscured view—and the massive distraction of her lover going utterly out of his mind. Closing her eyes, she tried to visualize the body and the position of the blade. It had been sticking out of Gatt’s back, to the right of the spine. In the lung, between the ribs? Why go that route? The killer must have snuck up behind Gatt and had to strike quickly before being noticed.

Ren frowned. That didn’t make sense. Gatt was Ben-Hassrath, trained to pay attention to his surroundings. Was it really likely that he had been snuck up on? Sure, anyone could be, depending on the day, but maybe there was a more likely possibility.

She stood up suddenly as a new thought struck her. What if Gatt had been in on it? After all, what were the odds that he would be knifed in the back just close enough to their cabin that he could get there and die in the Iron Bull’s arms? Why go to the Iron Bull at all, instead of the other way to the fishing village, where someone might conceivably have been able to help him?

It was a ridiculous idea. What kind of person sacrificed their life on the off chance that someone would be framed for their murder? But she couldn’t shake her conviction that that was exactly what had happened—perhaps he had an accomplice in the Qun, and this was all a long plan to win the Iron Bull back, with a bonus if he killed the former Inquisitor in the process.

If that was the case, she was looking for an accomplice, a sleeper Qunari agent. So the question was, had she learned enough from Ashkaari to be able to find a Qunari agent without him? Because she knew just what he would say if she tried this idea out on him, even if they had still been speaking.

And with the thought, the idea that he might never speak to her again, the tears she had been so proud of not shedding snuck up on her. She threw herself on the bed that still had the indentation of his body, burying her face in the pillow that still smelled like him, and gave herself up to the grief and fear and anger she had been trying to deny.

She was too deeply asleep, worn out by the emotion and the stresses of the day, to hear the rumbling below ground, but she woke with a start the next morning when the earth shook violently beneath her.

Having gone to sleep fully dressed, she was able to bolt straight out the door, hurrying to the worksite where the Inquisition was building the lift, anxious to be certain no one had been hurt. The foreman, a tall dark-haired man originally from Starkhaven, met her with a warm but harassed smile. “Ren, glad you’re all right.”

“You, too, Dennon. Anyone down there when it happened?”

“No, thank the Maker. We had just gotten to the site.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Have to admit I’m a bit worried about finishing, if we’re going to have many more of these.”

Ren didn’t bother to point out that the earthquakes were the reason they were building the lift in the first place. This one had been much bigger than the first—she hadn’t bothered to straighten up before she left, but a number of things had fallen off the walls and shelves. 

For the first time this morning, it occurred to her to worry about the Iron Bull. She didn’t have the faintest idea where he might have gone to ground. She should check on the Chargers, too, make sure their camp hadn’t been damaged. And while she was at it, maybe she could figure out if one of them was secretly a Qunari agent.

The thought stopped her in her tracks. Of course. It only made sense, after all, to have someone stationed with the Iron Bull’s people to keep him in line. And of course, this was the first opportunity someone with the Chargers would have had to pull him back into the fold after the death of Corypheus. It hurt her to think that someone she had previously thought of as a friend might betray her, and worse, betray the Iron Bull, who thought of them as his family … but he had told her over and over again that she had to start thinking with spycraft in mind, and now it seemed inescapable.

With Krem and Flissa still in Orlais, she had no one in the Chargers she truly trusted, and without their influence, as soon as the Chargers learned of the split between herself and the Iron Bull, she would no longer be welcome in their camp. If she was going to find out anything at all, she would have to go now. 

Even to herself, she didn’t admit that what she was really hoping was to see her Ashkaari with the Chargers, safe and well and in his right mind. It was really too much to hope for, anyway—if he had rejected her, he would almost certainly have rejected his merc captain persona as well. But that didn’t stop her heart from pounding as she came closer to the Chargers’ camp, or her eyes from scanning the tents and fires looking for the familiar horned figure.


	6. Suspicion

The Chargers looked up as Ren came into camp; Dalish waved to her from the ocean, where she appeared to be fishing. Ren went over to join the elf. “Catch anything?”

“Not much.” She looked over her shoulder. “Where’s the Chief?”

“He had some business in the village,” Ren lied. Oh, how she wished she were telling the truth. That also told her the Iron Bull hadn’t come to the Chargers’ camp after he left her. She was relieved, because that made the task of asking questions easier, but disappointed because it didn’t answer the question of where he had gone. “Anything unusual going on here? Anyone injuried in the quake?”

“No. Nice thing about tents, nothing to fall on you.” Dalish chuckled. “The aravels used to tip over in high winds; I don’t miss that.”

“What do you miss?”

“Ah, there’s a question.” The elf’s green eyes looked out across the ocean as she thought about the answer. “My people, mostly. But it wouldn’t be the same now; I’ve been gone too long.” She glanced at Ren thoughtfully. “Makes me wonder about the Chief. He’s been gone from his people for a long time.”

“You mean the Qunari?”

“I mean us. He was part of the Chargers, and then he left to be part of the Inquisitor’s inner circle. Can he come back and be part of the Chargers again, just like that?”

“Can he?”

Dalish shrugged. “Time will tell.” A fish tugged on the line and she turned her attention back to it.

Ren left the water and made her way to the central fire, finding Stitches there boiling a potion and Grim lounging nearby keeping him company. “I’m glad to find you all in good health,” she said to them. “I was worried when the earthquake hit.”

“No troubles here,” Stitches said. “Have a seat?”

“Oh, I can’t stay. I have to get back up the mountain to the lift site later this afternoon," she lied. "Thank you, though.”

Stitches nodded. “Chief coming by?” 

“Probably later.” 

Was it her imagination, or was Grim watching her with suspicion? Did he know what had happened? No, she decided eventually, that was just normal Grim. Besides, any Ben-Hassrath spy in the Chargers would have to be professional enough not to let on that they knew what had happened between Ren and the Iron Bull.

She waved at the two of them and approached Skinner, who was honing her blades on a whetstone. “That’s smoothing out nicely,” she offered, seeing the expert way the elf was dealing with the nick in the blade.

Skinner nodded. “Thanks.”

“I thought you were thinking about getting new ones.”

“Old ones work just fine.” Skinner looked up. “Not coming from any fancy noble’s house, we learned how to keep our things in good condition.” The criticism of Ren’s supposed profligacy was implicit in her tone.

Ren refused to be goaded. “Sensible.” She meant to look for Rocky, assuming that if the Ben-Hassrath had a spy placed in the Chargers, it would have to be a member of the Iron Bull’s inner circle, but far up on the hill she spied a familiar horned figure. Joy filled her, the happiness she always felt being with him and knowing he was hers … and then it ebbed like a wave from the sand as she remembered that he wasn’t. And wouldn’t be again if she couldn’t find Gatt’s real killer.

“See you,” she said briefly to Skinner, who didn’t even bother to look up.

On the outskirts of camp, she ran into Rocky, coming back from the stream with a bucket of water. “Ren!” he said cheerfully. “Fine morning.”

“Earthquake didn’t tumble you out of bed?” she asked him, unable to stop a smile from spreading across her face in response to the cheerful greeting. 

“Oh, it did, but I’ve been tumbled out of bed by worse.” He chuckled. “Been up to the lift site yet this morning?” 

“I checked on them; everything seemed fine.”

“Think they could use an extra sapper? Been a while since I’ve been underground. Kind of itching to blow something up.”

“I’m sure they’d appreciate it, thank you, Rocky.”

“Good. I’ll head up there in a bit, then.”

“I imagine I’ll see you there.” She nodded at him and hurried off into the underbrush, making her way through the tangle quickly so as to get her telltale red head out of the Iron Bull’s sight. Only once she was a good mile away from the camp did it occur to her to wonder why Rocky had suddenly asked her about the Inquisition’s lift. He’d never shown any interest in it before. Could it be that he was looking to keep an eye on the Inquisition’s activities?

Ren sighed. It could be any of them. How would she know? She needed the Iron Bull’s vast experience … but of course, if one of his Chargers was a Ben-Hassrath, his powers of observation had already failed him. She would have to do this on her own, somehow.

She returned to the house at the top of the cliff, noticing that the Iron Bull had been by to collect the bag of his belongings. While she was glad there wouldn’t be a confrontation, she wished she had seen him, just … just to see him. Just for a moment.

A raven flew silently from the woods, landing on her outstretched finger, and she unrolled the message from around its leg.

“Coming soonest. Bringing assistance. Inquisition work to do; need your help. – Dorian.”

Ren sighed. She had been waiting for this; the Inquisition was going to want her to go down the lift into the Deep Roads. At least Dorian would be with her, and whoever was coming with him … and Dorian would help her with the Iron Bull and the mystery of Gatt’s death, or so she hoped. 

But she couldn’t face the Deep Roads and whatever was causing the earthquakes without the Iron Bull. So she was going to have to talk to him, and somehow she was going to have to convince him to help her, despite murder and the Qun and the issues between them.  
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  
The Iron Bull had debated what to say to the Chargers, if anything, but the sight of Ren amongst them decided him that he would keep quiet. He didn’t think any of the Chargers were in danger from her, assuming she had killed Gatt, and if she hadn’t, it wouldn’t be fair to poison their minds against her.

If she hadn’t, who had? That was the part he was trying to figure out. Gatt could be unpleasant; if the knifing had been the product of some kind of fight, the Iron Bull would have understood it. But this had been deliberate—Gatt had been chosen on purpose. Was it because he was Ben-Hassrath? Had he been killed because somehow he had betrayed the Ben-Hassrath? Had it been a message for the Iron Bull? The circumstances were suspicious: Gatt had to have been stabbed within a short distance from the house on the cliff to manage to stagger there with a knife in his back, which made it more likely that the killing was Ben-Hassrath related.

In which case, the Iron Bull had to figure out who on the Storm Coast was secretly Ben-Hassrath.

He stopped suddenly, frowning, on the hill leading down to the Chargers’ camp. Was that what Morvoren had been doing in the camp, looking for a Ben-Hassrath spy? Among the Chargers?

Impossible. Impossible, he told himself. No Ben-Hassrath could have escaped him. He would have known.

But the suspicion was there now, and as he spoke to the Chargers, he couldn’t help but wonder. They were different, now, too, not so natural with him. They hesitated more before they spoke to him than they used to. 

He had been gone from them for over a year, fighting at someone else’s side—had he really expected he would go back and it would be the same? Did he even want it to be the same? 

On his way out of camp, he paused as if looking out over the ocean, but in actuality his gaze was sweeping over his Chargers. Dalish was coming into her own, growing more confident in her powers. She could handle a unit now. Stitches was settling in, becoming comfortable. He might want a more permanent situation, a house in the village where he could set up a surgery. The Iron Bull wondered if his healer had a man somewhere, if that was the reason for his sudden domesticity. 

Grim seemed the same, silent and willing and uninterested in anything outside a fight. Could a man be that simple? Could he be hiding something under that taciturn exterior? And Skinner, so angry still—was that anger a sham, the loud mask to hide a deeper purpose?

Rocky had grown more cheerful, as if something over the past year or so had been a wonderful surprise. It was an odd demeanor for the dwarf, which made the Iron Bull think Rocky couldn’t be a spy; a spy would be careful not to be noticeably different.

“Fuck,” he said aloud to himself. Damn that Morvoren, even away from him she was influencing his thoughts. How could he doubt his own hand-picked crew?

Of course, when he went back to the Qun, the Chargers wouldn’t be his crew any more. He should cut ties with them now, to prove that his purpose was genuine. But if he cut ties with them, how would he keep tabs on what Morvoren was up to?

Scratching his horn, he shuffled along the shoreline, letting the water lap over his boots.

He hadn’t gone very far when he became aware that someone was following him. When he turned around, she was there, the sun catching the highlights in her dark red hair, watching him.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

They looked at each other. The Iron Bull knew that if he wanted to know what had happened to Gatt, he had to question her, but all he wanted to do was hold her, and kiss her, and feel her body pressed against his. He fought the longing with all his training, but the Ben-Hassrath had never taught him what to do when the woman he loved betrayed him. They had never even touched on it.

At last she spoke. Her tone was crisp, but it covered a shakier emotion of some sort, he could hear it in her voice. “I have a job for you.”

“A what?” It was the last thing he had expected to hear, but as soon as he had asked the question he thought of this morning’s earthquake, and the lift the Inquisition was building. Without waiting for her response, he said, “Deep Roads.”

Ren nodded. “I assume the Qunari will want to know what’s going on.”

“How do you know they don’t?”

“I don’t. But you don’t know if they do, either. Maybe they’d take a Tal-Vashoth back with more alacrity if he had information they could use.”

The words stung, he wasn’t sure if it was because of the reminder that he was Tal-Vashoth and would have to go crawling back on his knees, or her blithe acceptance of his eventual return to the Qun. “When?” he asked.

“The lift’s going to take a few more days, but I think we’ll be the first ones down. So … you’ll do it?” Her eyes told the real story—she was afraid to go, and she wanted him with her.

He had never refused her before; he had always been there when she needed him, and seeing her frightened touched something within him that he hadn’t even known was vulnerable. Besides, if he had her in the Deep Roads sooner or later she would slip and he would figure out who killed Gatt, he told himself. But he kept all of that out of his voice. “Fine.”

“Fine? Good.”

The Iron Bull turned his back on her with difficulty, moving on down the beach toward the cave he had adopted as his own, trying not to be glad that he had an excuse to fight at her side again.


	7. The Lift

The raven gave Ren warning of her approaching visitors, so she was waiting outside when they made the final climb up to her little round house.

Dorian was panting, although largely for show, Ren could tell. “My dear. What. A. Difficult. Climb. Do you perchance have a glass of wine for a man who has worked so hard to reach you?”

“At least.” She hugged him hard, delighted to see him. The past several days had been desolate and lonely; the sight of Dorian’s beloved face was almost enough to bring tears to her eyes.

Behind Dorian she saw Cassandra and Cole.

“Cole?” she said softly to Dorian.

“He showed up at Skyhold, said you and Bull needed him.”

Ren frowned at the spirit boy, who was leaning far out over the edge of the cliff, looking down with curiosity. “He’s creepy, but he’s not wrong.”

“You didn’t tell us what happened,” Cassandra said. She and Ren shook hands rather than hugging.

“Lost. A dark maze, a tangled web. Many exits, but none that satisfy him.”

Nodding at Cole, Ren said, “That puts it in a nutshell.”

“Maybe for you.” Dorian waited expectantly, and Ren related everything that had happened since they’d arrived at the Storm Coast. 

“He has to know that if I’d killed Gatt, I wouldn’t have used my own blade. Among other things he ought to know,” Ren finished bitterly.

“He may feel that it is a convenient excuse to draw himself away from you while he wrestles with his identity.” The kindness in Cassandra’s eyes softened the blunt words. “Many of us have been there.”

“I always thought he took that break from the Qun too lightly.”

“Did you?” Ren glanced at Dorian. “Some warning might have been nice.”

He smiled at her. “Would you have listened?”

“Maybe not,” Ren admitted unwillingly.

“Then there would have been little point.”

“You had a great deal to think of; we all did,” Cassandra said. “There was no time for such questions. But since the death of Corypheus, even with the distraction with the Avvar, I know I have given a great deal of thought to what I want to do with the rest of my life. Blackwall went to the Grey Wardens, Varric returned to Kirkwall, Vivienne chose to reform the Circles of Magi.” She glanced at Dorian, who gave a small shake of the head. “Many of us are reconsidering our plans. Josephine is making preparations to marry Teyrn Fergus Cousland; the Inquisition will be looking for a new ambassador.”

Ren sighed. She got Cassandra’s point; she wished she didn’t.

“Tumbling into space, nothing below, no certainty, only the rocks and the endless ocean,” Cole said.

“Is that how he felt?” Ren asked. “Really? As though there were nothing beneath him.” She groaned. “I’ve been so stupid.”

“Not stupid, my dear, just …” Dorian shrugged. “You have never been in a relationship before, never learned to pay attention to another person, to anticipate their needs. I hadn’t, either, before Robert, and I learned a great deal from it. But then, I wasn’t the Inquisitor.”

“So how do I get him back?” Ren looked from one to the other of them. A sharp, chilly wind blew past them, and she realized that none of them had even had a chance to sit down. “And here I go again making this all about me. Come inside, put your feet up, I’ll get you some wine and something to eat. I hope you all like fish.”

Dorian grimaced, Cassandra shrugged, and Cole looked eager. “The fish think the pan looks like the ocean, until they don’t.”

“Well, at least they go happy,” Ren said philosophically.

Another tremor, deep as the last, shook the ground while Ren was preparing the fish, but mercifully before she’d begun frying them. They all braced themselves along the walls, watching the books fall of the shelves as the earth shook.

“Well, I see now why we are here,” Cassandra noted when it was over. Her voice was calm, but Ren noticed a certain relief in her face when she sank into her chair again.

Dorian had kept hold of his wineglass. He drained it now and poured a fresh amount. “Orzammar doesn’t know why this is happening?”

“Not that they’ve said. It could be that we’ll get down there and find out they have the culprit and have just been waiting for us to go and fight someone.” Ren stacked the books up on the floor next to the bed and went back to the fireplace, straightening the tripod and putting the pan back on it. “I’m hoping some crazy, greedy dwarf who wants all the lyrium for himself is blowing up the mines. We squash him and we’re back up here the next day.”

The silence that followed her words told her what the others thought of that optimistic scenario. She didn’t believe in it, either, but she was determined to think positively about at least one aspect of her life.

Ren and Cassandra shared the bed that night; Cassandra slept deeply, her cold, bony feet on Ren’s legs most of the time, but Ren lay awake listening to Dorian’s light snore. She could hear nothing from the corner where Cole lay, and it occurred to her that maybe he didn’t even sleep; maybe he was just lying there wide awake staring at her. The idea made her want to jump out of bed and run down the hill.

Eventually the long night passed. After a hasty breakfast, they collected their packs and Ren led the way to the lift site. Dennon was waiting for them, a smile on his handsome face when Ren came into sight. “Good morning!”

“Good morning.” She wasn’t feeling particularly cheerful this morning. But then she heard a familiar scuffing of feet in slouchy old boots behind her, and she forced a smile, stepping a little closer to Dennon.  
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  
The Iron Bull wasn’t fooled by Morvoren’s attempt at flirting with the lift’s site foreman … but he didn’t like it anyway. He wasn’t sure if he was pissed at her for the blatant manipulation attempt or impressed by the fact that she was trying it. Dissembling wasn’t usually her strong suit, and part of him was touched that she was trying it for him.

Ah, fuck, he thought, that was no road to go down. This trek into the Deep Roads was going to be hard enough without that. 

Suddenly in front of him, like an apparition, Cole appeared, looking up at him from under his hat sorrowfully. “The Iron Bull,” he said. “Only one way through, to charge like a bull, knocking aside barriers with the horns, but it isn’t that way, and the horns get stuck.”

“You better not mean my horns and those damn tunnels, kid,” he roared. Cole blinked and looked confused. The Iron Bull knew better, naturally, but he wasn’t going to let the kid into his head so soon—and he was actually a little worried about his horns getting stuck in tiny little tunnels down there.

“Iron Bull.” Cassandra gave him a little nod. Dorian gave him an eyebrow-raise—Morvoren had told them her side of the story. Of course, she would never tell them that she had killed Gatt, and no doubt she had given them a convincing detail or two, like the idea that she wouldn’t have used her own knife. The Iron Bull had thought of that, too, and tried to tell himself that it was a ploy, that she had used her own knife in order to throw him off, including the extra detail of having “lost” it previous to the attack.

That none of that fit her personality at all was a minor detail, he told himself. 

Dennon was leading them to the edge of the big hole in the ground, and the rickety structure that had been built there. The Iron Bull stopped short, staring at it. That flimsy thing was supposed to carry them down into the depths of the fucking world? No way.

He even took a step backward, about to loudly refuse to go, when he caught Dorian’s eye. The Vint was watching him, a little half-smile on his mustached face, as if he was daring the Iron Bull to be a coward and to back out of this expedition. Well. That wasn’t going to happen.

“We going to take all day about this, or what?” he said loudly.

Dorian's smile was a full-on smirk now, and the Iron Bull pushed past the mage, ignoring him entirely.

Dennon said, “I haven’t heard anything about darkspawn from our laborers, but … the earthquakes have been tough. We’d like to get you down there as quickly as we can before another one hits.”

Ren leaned over and looked down. “Yes, I think we’d like that, too,” she agreed. Her face was paler than usual; she was afraid to go down there, but was holding herself together like the Inquisitor she had been. Maybe that had been the problem all along, the Iron Bull thought. Maybe he should have found a way to make her stay on as the Inquisitor, and none of this would ever have happened. Ren straightened up. “We’re supposed to be meeting with a Shaper Valta.”

“Down below,” Dennon said. “Orzammar dwarves can’t come to the surface, so she’s waiting for you at the bottom of the lift. I’ll be up here if you need anything. There’s a base camp down there being run by dwarves from the Legion of the Dead, and the Inquisition is sending along supplies as well.”

“Thank you, Dennon.” Ren faced the lift, taking a deep breath. “No time like the present,” she said, and stepped onto it. It swayed a bit under her feet. She took a deep breath and offered them a game smile. “Next?”

Cole and Dorian stepped gingerly on as well. The Iron Bull looked at Dennon. “This thing going to hold all of us?” He meant, was it going to hold him, but he didn’t want to come out and say it.

Dennon shrugged. “It should.”

The Iron Bull had heard more comforting things in his life. Cassandra stepped onto the lift, and then they were all waiting for him. 

“Try not to shift around,” Dennon said. “And keep back from the edge. It’s a long way down.”

“Thanks,” the Iron Bull muttered, and stepped onto the boards. The lift swayed underneath him and creaked with his added weight, and he felt nauseous at the sensation of hanging in the air with nothing beneath him. 

Then it started to move, and that was even more nauseating. And it never seemed to end.

Dorian paced back and forth, looking below them, both of which the Iron Bull devoutly wished he would stop doing. “Is it just me, or is this the slowest lift ever constructed?”

“It’s better than being the fastest lift ever constructed and crashing at the bottom,” Ren said philosophically. “Or, you know, climbing down.”

“Perhaps. Still … one longs for music. Possibly something with a flute.” Dorian sighed impatiently and resumed his pacing.

Cole was watching the walls go by with a look of wonder on his face. As far as the Iron Bull could tell, this looked just like the Fade, or like the Fade had when they were trapped in it. Maybe the kid felt right at home.

At last—at very long last—they reached the bottom, and the Iron Bull wasn’t the only one breathing a sigh of relief when they stepped off of swaying wood and onto solid rock.


	8. Children of the Stone

Ren squinted in the dim light of the smoky torches, looking for someone, anyone, or a way farther in. At last she saw a glint of metal and made her way toward it.

“Inquisitor?” came a voice.

“Ren Trevelyan. Former Inquisitor. Are you Shaper Valta?” She tried to make out the other person in the darkness. The voice had sounded female, so it was worth the guess.

“Yes. The Shaperate welcomes you into the Deep Roads.”

“Thank you.” Slowly Ren’s eyes were beginning to adjust to the dimness. She blinked rapidly, trying to make the adjustment more quickly, and wondered how the Iron Bull was finding the limited light, given his missing eye. She glanced at him, but couldn’t see his face well enough to tell. 

“I’ll take you to the base camp. The Legion of the Dead awaits us there, as do some of your Inquisition’s people.”

Ren followed Valta, the others behind them. 

“What exactly is a Shaper, if you don’t mind my asking?” Dorian’s voice rang off the stone all around them.

“We chronicle the life and times of our people.”

“Historians, then,” Cassandra said.

“Some,” Valta agreed. “But also scholars and genealogists, occasionally explorers. We do what we must to preserve the past. We must be meticulous in every detail.”

Cassandra remarked, “That does not sound easy.”

“No, it isn’t always.”

The walls shook around them, and Ren frowned. “Has there been much of that?”

“The situation continues to worsen,” Valta told her. “A nearby mine has collapsed and darkspawn are coming through the cracks in the tunnels. The Legion of the Dead hasn’t been able to stop up the cracks yet.”

“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned the ‘Legion of the Dead’,” Dorian said. “What, exactly, is that? Do dwarves practice necromancy?”

Valta chuckled. “No. The Legion are simply dwarves who have chosen to give up their lives to fight darkspawn in the Deep Roads. They call themselves the dead because that is how they perceive themselves.”

“So they can fight without fear of leaving behind people who care about them,” the Iron Bull said.

“Yes. That’s right.”

“Good men.”

“They are,” Valta agreed softly.

“Valta,” Ren said, “if the Legion are used to fighting darkspawn, why call on the Inquisition? Can’t they handle this themselves?”

“This is a level of disaster the Legion isn’t prepared for. The Blight decimated them—many even went topside to fight in the final battle against the Archdemon. And in the years since the Blight, they have tried to rebuild their numbers, but it has been slow going. We’ve called on the Grey Wardens for aid, but there’s been no answer.”

Ren wondered about that. The Grey Wardens had been largely silent since the defeat of Corypheus, but surely they had a mandate to help out in the Deep Roads when there was a darkspawn problem, didn’t they?

The walls were unbroken stone, the light from the torches bouncing off the surfaces. Here and there, Ren could see the glimmer of an underground stream, and she could smell the familiar seaside scent of spindleweed. Involuntarily, she looked over her shoulder at the Iron Bull. For so long while they lived in landlocked Skyhold, both of them had kept spindleweed in their rooms to remind them of the ocean they loved. It was a scent she always associated with him now, and how much she wished they could share the comfort of that aroma now, letting it give them both strength. Instead, he was as closed off to her as the very stone they walked through, as hardened and unfeeling. 

If she had only known it, his thoughts were running on similar paths. He tried to tell himself that such a reliance on symbols was not Qunari, that he needed to control his thoughts and with that control he would be able to banish the oppression of this endless tunnel and the fear of what lay beneath and above him and the longing for the woman who smelled like the spindleweed … but he couldn’t quite seem to grasp the inner calm necessary to gain the control he sought.

Ahead of them, he could hear the sounds of fighting, and Valta’s breathing sped up, noticeable in the narrow passageway that amplified every sound.

“Darkspawn,” she said. “Hurry.”

They sped up, following her as she jogged along the tunnel. The sounds of fighting grew louder. The Iron Bull could hear a deep voice shouting “Get those charges in place! Come on, move your asses, Legion!” It was too bad the dwarves couldn’t have the secret to gaatlok. Dwarven explosives were good, but not as good, despite Rocky’s claims for them.

A tremendous boom shook the stone. They burst out into a large cavern, finding dwarves and darkspawn and fragments of stone everywhere. The Iron Bull wondered if the charges had done the job the deep voice had expected them to. Even as he was drawing his sword, he was looking to see if he could find the place where the charges had detonated. At last he did, and he noted with approval that it appeared at least in this wall, the holes were sealed.

With that question answered, he threw himself into the fray. Above the din of combat, he heard Ren’s voice raised to remind her people to be cautious of the darkspawn blood. She had become such a good leader, he thought, not without a glow of pride—in her, and in himself, given what a part he had played in her growth.

At last, the darkspawn were down. The Legion took on the task of gathering the bodies and dealing with them, while Valta found the Inquisition’s team a bucket of clean water and some rags so that they could make sure they removed all the traces of tainted blood from their bodies and armor.

A heavily bearded dwarf came up to them as they were finishing the task. “Surfacers,” he scoffed in the deep voice the Iron Bull had heard from the tunnel.

“Now, now, be nice,” Valta scolded him.

He grunted.

Valta chuckled. “Former Inquisitor Ren, meet Lieutenant Renn.”

“Well, that’s not going to be confusing at all.” Ren grinned, and the dwarf, albeit reluctantly, grinned back.

“Maybe you surfacers aren’t all bad, after all.”

“Thank you.” 

“Lieutenant Renn is a veteran of the Fifth Blight and one of the Legion’s finest commanders.”

“Oldest, she means. Not much to commanding the Legion but not dying.”

“You think collapsing that wall will buy us some time?” the Iron Bull asked.

“It better. We’ve got work to do; can’t stand around here fighting darkspawn all day, not and get to the bottom of these quakes.”

“Are you familiar with this area of the Deep Roads?” Ren asked.

“Yes,” Valta replied. “Renn and I have been working this area together, reclaiming it from the darkspawn, for a few years now.”

“Mark the map, fight an army. Mark the map, fall in a hole. And so on.” The Lieutenant looked at Valta with what might have been a smile under the black weight of his beard.

“You can quit any time,” Valta said dryly.

“When we still have so much to fight about?” They both laughed companionably.

“What can you tell us about the quakes?” Cassandra asked.

The two dwarves exchanged a meaningful glance. Valta looked away first.

“Might as well tell them,” the Lieutenant said to her.

“Tell us what?” Ren looked from one to the other.

“Her crazy theory.”

“It’s not crazy!” Valta frowned. “Fine. I think there’s a … rhythm in the tremors.”

“A rhythm? What kind of rhythm?” Dorian asked.

“Do you hear it?” the Iron Bull asked Renn.

Reluctantly, the dwarf admitted, “Yeah, I do. But it doesn’t prove anything.”

“What do you think it means?” Dorian asked Valta.

“I think the quakes are deliberate, that there’s an … intelligence behind them.”

“What kind of thing could be big enough to shake the Deep Roads?” the Iron Bull demanded.

“The Stone speaks to her, through her, and she wants to know its secrets. The Memories tell her things, things that draw her further and further into the dark.” 

They all looked around, having entirely forgotten Cole was there.

“Stop that,” the Iron Bull snapped. “You’re a real kid now, remember?”

“Real people aren’t forgotten, right, the Iron Bull?”

“Right.”

Valta was frowning at Cole. “The Memories have told me things. How did you know?”

“He knows things,” Ren said. “You get used to it eventually.” She frowned at Cole, too, meaningfully. “Or you don’t.”

“I see.” Valta didn’t seem thrilled by the kid; the Iron Bull couldn’t blame her. He wasn’t exactly normal, by any standards.

“You were saying?” Dorian asked.

“I found an ancient text on an expedition last year. I thought—I thought it was a myth. But now … It described giant creatures, called ‘Titans’, who live in the Stone. They … they sing in it, shaping it.”

“You think one of these Titans is causing the earthquakes?” The skepticism in Cassandra’s tone was there for everyone to hear.

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

“Even though the Memories have no mention of these Titans, and the text she found predated the First Blight and was so crumbled you could barely read it.” Renn muttered the words half under his breath, but they all heard him anyway.

Valta’s shoulders slumped under the criticism. “I know what I read,” she whispered.

“In my experience,” Ren said to them, “mysterious songs often lure people to their deaths.”

“All the better reason to get to the bottom of this.” The Lieutenant rested a hand on Valta’s shoulder in apology.

“A magic unique to the Deep Roads, albeit a dangerous one? Intriguing,” Dorian said.

Ren sighed. “Well, I committed to come down here and stop the earthquakes that are destroying the mines. I suppose that means taking on whatever is causing them.” 

The Lieutenant grinned at Ren. “A woman of action. Good. That’s what we need down here.”

“Hey!” Valta glared at him.

“And a woman of wits. Both are good,” Renn hastily corrected himself.

“I suppose that means we must go farther in,” Cassandra said.

“And farther down,” Valta told her. “The rhythm I sense comes from below us.”

Fucking fantastic, the Iron Bull thought. Farther down. It was a challenge, right? A test of whether he could truly recommit to the Qun? Yeah. A test. That’s all it was. He tried not to think about the tons of rock and earth that already lay above his head, or the friend he had lost just days before, or the woman he was sure was behind that loss.

Ren followed Valta and Lieutenant Renn to the area cleared and prepared as a base camp. The Legion of the Dead dwarves had finished cleaning up the darkspawn and now were cleaning up themselves. Ren saw a few bodies covered in sheets, placed neatly in a corner.

“We’ll send them back to the Stone later,” Lieutenant Renn told her. “They were dead already; we celebrate our own funerals before coming to the Deep Roads.”

“An efficient way to live.”

“It is that,” he agreed. He frowned. “I’ve been meaning to ask you … Skyhold. How does it—how does it hold in the sky? How do you keep it from just … flying away?”

“Well, it doesn’t, really. It’s built into the side of a mountain.”

“Oh.” Lieutenant Renn looked disappointed.

“You were imagining it just floating in the sky?”

“More or less.”

Ren nodded. “It does sound like it ought to.” She looked at him curiously. “You were in the First Blight—does that mean you were on the surface?”

“Yup. Managed to avoid falling off it.”

She studied his face, looking to see if he was joking. He didn’t appear to be. “Fortunate for you,” she said. In a corner, she saw Cassandra and Dorian opening packs and sorting items and beginning to prepare to delve even further into the Deep Roads. The Iron Bull was walking around the base camp, studying the dwarves’ fortifications, listening to their discussions. The Ben-Hassrath spy was back again, she saw. That was good, for now, at least.

Lieutenant Renn snorted. “I was just a wet-nosed recruit. What did I know?”

“You survived. That’s something.”

He shrugged. “Swing your axe long enough, you’re bound to hit something.”

“Lost, blinded, too bright, too bright. Nothing above, nothing around, no Stone to feel. Swing your axe, hit a darkspawn, swing your axe, hope to die, hope to return to the Stone, one way or another.” Cole had materialized abruptly next to them. He looked at Lieutenant Renn from under his hat.

“Who in the name of the Ancestors are you?” 

“This is Cole. You’ll … well, in theory, you’ll get used to him.”

“Tell him to get the fuck out of my head.”

Ren grinned. He sounded like the Iron Bull. “Good luck with that.” She watched as Cole wandered through the assemblage of dwarves, hoping he wouldn’t cause too much trouble.

“I’m gonna go get my gear. I’ll meet you at the far entrance when you’re ready.”

He walked off, and Ren joined the others in the corner. An elf in Inquisition gear was with them. “Inquisitor. I mean, Lady Trevelyan. I mean …”

“Yes, it’s a problem,” Ren said. She hated having to go by ‘Lady Trevelyan’. “How about we go with Ren, for the time being. And you are?”

“Marala. I’m the head of the Inquisition force down here. There are only a few of us, and we’re up and down between here and the surface, keeping the lines of communication open. Whatever you need, I’m here to make sure you get it.”

What she needed, Ren thought, was fresh air and sunlight and the crashing of the waves, but she didn’t say as much. Valta was joining them, a smile on her face, and with her a dwarf in Inquisition armor. “Have you met Culp? One of your people; he’s been telling me about the surface.” She shuddered. “It’s hard to imagine.”

“You’ve never been curious about it?” Dorian asked her.

“If I glimpsed your sky for even a moment, I would immediately be banished from Orzammar and written out of the Memories,” she told him. “For a Shaper, that would mean the end of … everything I’ve ever wanted.”

“Inquisition’s been on everyone’s lips since the death of Corypheus,” Culp said. “I came from Orzammar; King Bhelen himself was asking about you, and wished to meet you personally, but his Assembly talked him out of it.”

“I’m sure the Inquisitor could make the journey, if King Bhelen wishes,” Cassandra said.

“That’s what I told them.” Culp glanced at Ren. “The king really wanted to meet the … original Inquisitor.”

Ren kept silent. Once this was over, the last thing she was going to want to do, she suspected, was go back underground to Orzammar.

“Tell me more about these ‘Titans’,” she said to Valta. “You seem quite excited about them.”

“Didn’t I read that you recently tracked down the first Inquisitor?” Valta asked. “It must have been the same for you.”

“Of course,” Ren said, although it hadn’t been, particularly, and Ameridan had been more a tragic cautionary tale to her than a legend come to life. Marala, however, seemed quite excited about it, and she told Valta the story, a great deal embroidered.

Valta nodded. “You see? This is a piece of our history that I can fill in, add to the Memories. But … it’s more than that, too. I have a tremendous Stone sense, but all I can do is listen. The Titans can sing through the Stone, make it vibrate to their voice. It is—extraordinary.”

The Iron Bull, lounging against the wall near the group, watched Valta with concern. The way her eyes were shining … He’d met a lot of zealots in his time, and this one definitely bore watching.

“We call ourselves Children of the Stone,” Valta went on. “What does that make the Titans?”

Culp tilted his head. “You think these Titans are our ancestors?”

“Maybe. Or maybe they’re something entirely different.”

“Either way, we have to get to the bottom of these quakes,” Cassandra reminded the dwarf.

“And we will.”

But the Iron Bull could see in her rapt expression that for her, the quakes were less important than her quest for these Titans of hers, and he felt a shiver of apprehension run through him.


	9. To Fight a Dragon

When the packs had been rearranged, everyone shouldered their load and they followed Valta and Lieutenant Renn into the dark. The torches cast a dim, shaky light on the walls of the passageway. It irritated the Iron Bull because he kept thinking he saw something moving out of the corner of his eye. Usually the missing eye didn’t bother him much; just sharpened his observation, really. But … for months now he’d had his _kadan_ at his side, and her blades had made it easier. She had fought as much as possible on his blind side, and he’d gotten used to having her there.

He bit back a growl of annoyance at himself. How could he have been so stupid as to let himself get that complacent? To place his trust that thoroughly in a human, one not of the Qun? Then one of his horns scraped against an outcropping, twisting his neck painfully, and he did growl.

“The Iron Bull, aren’t you afraid of darkspawn?” Cole asked him earnestly.

“Shut up, kid.”

“But, the Iron Bull—“

Ren’s voice from up ahead, cool and firm with command, said, “Cole,” and the kid subsided.

“As long as we don’t run into an emissary, we should be all right,” Valta called back, and Lieutenant Renn growled.

“Thanks a lot, Valta. Now we definitely will.”

“Emissary?” inquired Dorian.

“Darkspawn mage. Where the others are mindless killing machines, emissaries are crafty. Intelligent.”

“Darkspawn _saarebas_?” That was a new one for the Iron Bull. “Crap.”

“You said it.”

“So the more emissaries we kill, the better, right?” Ren smiled at the dwarf.

“You’d like to think that,” he said, stopping in front of a stone lever, “but they just keep makin’ more of ‘em.” He motioned for everyone to step past him, and the Iron Bull’s heart rose into his throat when he realized it was another lift, this one shrouded in darkness, and they were about to descend into the depths—again. Even further.

“How exactly do the darkspawn come into being?” Cassandra asked.

Lieutenant Renn froze in the process of pulling the lever. He and Valta shared a look, and then he shook his head. “You just pray to whatever deity you believe in that you never have to find out.”

The Iron Bull felt alarmed by the darkness in the dwarf’s voice. He was a hard man, but something about the answer to that question scared him. The Iron Bull made a mental note to ask the Lieutenant later, and not to take no for an answer.

Renn pulled the lever all the way and then jumped on the lift as it began to descend. This one was made of stone, ancient dwarven craftsmanship, and it moved more smoothly than the one the Inquisition had built.

When they reached the bottom, they headed off into the darkness again. The Iron Bull found himself walking behind the two dwarves.

After walking for some time in silence, Valta said softly, “Do you want to talk about it?” Lieutenant Renn growled a no, and she subsided for a moment, then she spoke again. “You served with Bernat a long time. Don’t you want—“

“No,” Renn said again, louder.

The Iron Bull said grimly, “It’s never easy to lose a member of your company.” He thought about Gatt, food for the animals up on the surface of the earth, and he felt the anger rise in him again. 

Lieutenant Renn looked up at him. “Friend?”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry.”

“Thanks. Me, too.”

Renn shrugged. “It was quick, and he returned to the Stone with honor. We should all be so lucky. What about you?”

“Not quick, and no honor.” He said it loud enough that Morvoren could hear him, even at the back of the group. He hoped it hurt her, like a dagger in the back.

“It’s all right to be upset,” Valta said gently.

“Does it help?” the Iron Bull asked her.

“Sometimes.” He and Lieutenant Renn grunted in unison at that one. Valta lapsed into silence for a bit, then she stopped, just ahead of them, a hand out to halt their progress. “Smell that?”

He did; it was foul. Corrupted. It turned his stomach.

Valta nodded. “Darkspawn. I will never get used to their stench; it gets on everything. Corrupts the very air.” She shuddered.

“Get ready,” Ren called from the back of the group. “I can hear them.” She turned in the passageway, her blades catching the light from the torches. 

Near the Iron Bull, he saw the flickering that meant Cole was merging with the Fade. Harder to do down here, or so it seemed, as Cole was grunting with the exertion.

The first of the darkspawn were on them. Ren and Cassandra filled the passage, Cassandra’s shield and Ren’s daggers making contact. 

“Keep your mouth closed, Inquisitor!” Lieutenant Renn shouted. “You don’t want to swallow so much as a drop.”

She made no indication she had heard him, her focus totally on the darkspawn, finding the most efficient places to cut. Dorian’s magic moved over her shoulder, ice and fire in equal measure. The Iron Bull fidgeted. He hated to leave the battle in someone else’s hands, and he didn’t want to admit to himself how afraid he was that she would be tainted.

There were only a few darkspawn, and they were down shortly, the two women and the mage having handled them all smoothly. They had been practicing fighting together for years, after all.

“Damn, Inquisitor, you fight darkspawn like you’ve been doing it all your life,” Lieutenant Renn said admiringly as he studied Morvoren for splashes of tainted blood. At last he announced her clean, and the Iron Bull felt relief bubble up in him, all the more unexpectedly for how firmly he had told himself he would not care.

“I’m not the Inquisitor any longer,” Ren reminded the dwarf, but he shrugged the comment off.

“You know, you’re famous, even down here.” He leaned closer to her, his bearded face eager. “Is it true you’ve killed a dragon?”

Just the words were enough. The Iron Bull turned away so no one could see how quickly his cock had hardened, thinking of the dragons they had killed, thinking of taking her on the still-warm bodies, dragon’s blood spattering them, in their mouths and on their faces. Fuck, she was hot. 

When Morvoren answered, he could tell from the shakiness in her voice that she was thinking the same thing, remembering those same moments. “Couple of them,” she said, clearly striving for a light and breezy tone, but the Iron Bull shuddered at the passion he could hear hidden in her voice. “You haven’t lived until you’ve felt the life leave them, their wings pulling you in so strongly one minute and then … motionless the next.”

He clenched his teeth against the desire. If they were still—if she was still—he would be dragging her off into the dark right now to have her, to feel her so wet and hot all around him. He felt rather than heard Cole next to him, and he clenched his fist. If the kid so much as opened his mouth, he’d—

“Come on,” he heard Morvoren say crisply. “No sense waiting around to be attacked.” She pushed past him. Did her hand reach out and caress his ass? He thought it did. He wanted it to have, wanted her to touch him. Oh, damn it, this was why he should have stayed on the surface of the earth.

“Tell me about their teeth,” Lieutenant Renn requested, and the Iron Bull wanted to rip something apart with his own teeth, anything to stop the torture that lived inside his head, that wouldn’t let loose as long as they were on this topic. Dorian was next to him, and he knew that Dorian knew what he and Morvoren did when they killed a dragon. He looked down, but the mage was studiously looking ahead of him. His silence spoke volumes, but they were volumes the Iron Bull had to ignore right now or he’d go out of his fucking mind.

“Big teeth. Sharp. They’ll pierce you when you least expect it,” Morvoren said bitterly.

Renn, oblivious to the undercurrents, said, “I’ve heard they don’t all breathe fire, and their scales have different colors and patterns.”

Dorian took pity on the Iron Bull—or, more likely, on Morvoren—and said, “All true. Different sizes, too, and some of them have this scream that is so loud, it gets into your head and you can barely move.”

“Sounds amazing.”

“Careful, Renn,” Valta teased. “I believe you’re drooling.”

“Aw, come on, who wouldn’t want to fight a dragon if they could?”

“I could do without it,” Dorian said.

The Iron Bull remained silent, and so did Morvoren.

“How much further will we go today?” Cassandra asked from the back.

Lieutenant Renn chuckled. “It’s still morning. We’ve got a long way to go yet.”

In front of the Iron Bull, Morvoren bit back a yawn. “Morning, really? I thought—“

Valta chuckled. “He’s just messing with you. We’ll stop up ahead here—there’s a cleared space where we can camp.” She looked back over her shoulder at them. “I’ve only met a few topsiders, but all of them complained how hard it was to adjust to the rhythms down here. We can feel the Stone, and her rhythms, and it keeps us going; I suppose from what I’ve read, She’s like your sun.”

“Or the tides,” Morvoren agreed, and the Iron Bull could see the ocean in his mind’s eye, the waves lapping on the sand, Morvoren’s naked body—he shut that vision down before he could take it any further. In front of him, Morvoren coughed, and a shaft of ice stabbed him in the gut as he worried. Had she swallowed some taint? Lieutenant Renn’s voice had been so filled with fear … how long would it take her to become a ghoul if she swallowed that stuff?

He willed Cole to ask the question, hoping the kid would read his mind. And he did, just … not quite the way he had hoped. “The Iron Bull is worried that you’ve become tainted, Inquisitor.”

There was a silence, and the Iron Bull could practically feel Morvoren stiffen in front of him. “Tell him to mind his own damned business, or get over himself and do his own asking. And stop calling me Inquisitor!”

“The Iron Bull, the former Inquisitor says—“

“Yes, I heard her,” he snapped. He didn’t have to look over his shoulder to know that Cassandra was smiling, and Cole wasn’t. At his side, neither was Dorian. But private conversation was impossible within these passages where the slightest sound bounced off the walls and echoed all around them, and the Iron Bull was rather glad of that. He didn’t want to hear whatever the mage might have to say, anyway.


	10. With All Your Senses

They came to the “cleared space” Valta had indicated, and none too soon—the surface party were uniformly exhausted, too tired to do much more than throw their packs down and make sure there was no debris underneath them as they stretched out on the bare ground.

The dwarves took pity on them all and did the rest of the work, setting up a tripod and foraging for materials to make a fire. Ren thought drowsily that it hadn’t occurred to her that it would be hard to find wood in the Deep Roads. She wondered what the dwarves did for fire further in, where everything was an artifact to be preserved. Perhaps they ate a lot of dried foods. Fortunately, they had brought along a fair amount. 

And then she was asleep, a thin, nervous sleep, but sleep all the same.

Ren awoke to Valta’s gentle hand on her arm. “It’s your watch.” Valta yawned. “I wanted to let you all rest, but … apparently these quakes have taken a lot out of me.”

“Does it bother you, when the Stone shakes? Do you feel … pain?” Ren asked. She sat up and stretched, her muscles aching from the walking, the carrying of packs, and the sleep on the hard stone.

Valta frowned. “Yes and no? I am bothered by the shaking, but I wouldn’t call it pain, exactly.”

“Get some sleep,” Ren said. “I’m fine.”

Or she was, until she saw that Lieutenant Renn had awakened the Iron Bull for a turn on watch as well. The prospect of sitting there by the tiny fire with him, alone but for the sleeping people all around them, excited her and worried her in equal measure.

He hunkered down, pouring himself a cup of the liquid boiling in the pot. Tasting it, he grimaced. “Tastes like one of Stitches’ potions.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Ren wasn’t feeling as though she needed anything in her stomach. There would be time enough for a breakfast later. 

They sat in silence for a while. Ren wanted to cry, thinking of what it should be like to be down here with him, the comfort they could be taking in each other’s arms. Not just the sex, which she missed, but the affection, the sense that he cared about her and that she offered him something he couldn’t gain anywhere else, a comfort and an ease. She missed that desperately.

As such, she couldn’t just sit here without talking, alone with her thoughts. “How are you holding up?”

He paused with the cup halfway to his lips for another sip of the brew. “Fine.”

“Good. Glad to hear it.”

“You?”

She shrugged. “A little sore.”

The Iron Bull opened his mouth and then shut it again. Ren wondered what he had been about to say. Offer a massage, perhaps? 

“Oh, this is ridiculous,” she snapped.

“What?”

“You and me. Sitting here like we’re at an Orlesian tea party.”

“What do you expect, after what you did?” he said in a low, savage voice.

“I didn’t do anything!”

“That’s what you say.”

“You know I didn’t; you just don’t want to face the truth.”

“The truth? I’ve faced it already—it was a mistake for me ever to leave the Qun.”

There was pain in his voice, and Ren hated to hear it, but she couldn’t let the topic go. “You don’t think it was a coincidence he just happened to make it to our door with his last gasp, do you? I was set up.”

“First he sets us up with the Venatori, and forces me into a choice between the Qun and the Inquisition, now someone kills him to set you up? You have some weird obsession with conspiracy theories.”

“Maybe that’s from too much time spent with you, Ben-Hassrath,” Ren hissed. “You’re telling me you couldn’t have set up both of those scenarios? Are you telling me your superiors would never have ordered them? Look at yourself, Ashkaari.” She used his special name without thinking, and then decided not to call it back—after all, she was trying to appeal to the part of him that did the thinking. “What wouldn’t the Ben-Hassrath do to get you back? You held Seheron together almost single-handedly, longer than anyone else ever had. You operated in Orlais on your own for years. You’re embedded in the Inquisition. You’re a valuable asset. You think they wouldn’t have killed Gatt to get you back? To discredit me? Come on!”

“You’re way off base, _kad_ —Morv—boss—Damn it!” He stood up, spilling the cup in the process. Ren wondered what he would end up calling her, since everything he tried had too many memories. He stalked away from the fire, his shoulders stiff with anger, and, she hoped, some confusion, as well. She was right; she knew she was. It was the only thing that made sense. But he had a blind spot toward his people, one she couldn’t blame him for. She would have to get him to see first, and then to understand. Hopefully she could do so before they both got killed down here, she thought pessimistically. 

Ren sat over the glowing coals a while longer, wondering how she was supposed to tell the passage of time down here, in the absence of any dwarven Stone sense, and when she was supposed to wake the others for a turn on watch, or to begin the day’s portion of the expedition—or even what constituted a day down here, for those who couldn’t feel the rhythms of the Stone. But her tangled thoughts were disrupted when everything around her started shaking. Unprepared for the violence of the upheaval, she found herself sprawling on her back, staring upward into the darkness that came when the fire was extinguished by falling debris, wondering if something else was set to fall on her.

Around her, she heard outcries and questioning voices as the quake woke the others.

Just as it began to settle, as she opened her mouth to call the roll and make sure everyone was all right, a foul stench replaced the faint dry, dusty odor that had permeated the air previously. She wrinkled her nose, trying to place the smell.

And then she knew, even before she heard Valta calling “Darkspawn!” and Lieutenant Renn’s gruff, deep voice, “To arms!”

Cursing the lax habits that had led her to leave her daggers in her pack while she slept, rather than at hand, Ren scrambled in the direction of where she had been lying—or what she thought was the direction. She rolled rather painfully into a wall instead. Around her, she could hear the sounds of fighting, but she could see nothing. The quake had extinguished the torches along with the fire, apparently.

She heard Valta call, “Behind you!” but she didn’t know who the dwarf was calling out to. She envied her the Stone sense that allowed her to know what was going on. No doubt the darkspawn knew, as well. They had the advantage here.

Panic was building inside her—she couldn’t see, didn’t know where her daggers were, had no way of fighting back that didn’t expose her to taint. Was there any way out of this, or was she going to die down here, buried in the dark, far from the ocean or the sky?

Then a strong, familiar hand closed on her shoulder, hauled her to her feet, and shoved the hilt of a weapon into her hand. He didn’t speak, but he was there next to her—she could feel the familiar warmth of his body, hear the harsh breathing that came along with the heavy swings of his blade.

Ren shifted the hilt from hand to hand, getting a sense of the weight. This was a sword, not a dagger, a less familiar mode of fighting for her, but she’d had some practice with it. The Iron Bull had insisted, just as he sometimes took a turn with daggers. 

“Listen for them,” he said in a low voice. “Be still and use your other senses. Should’ve taught you that, too,” he muttered under his breath.

She did as he said, closing her eyes to make the dark seem like a choice rather than a limitation. The smell got worse, and—yes, she could hear a shuffle, as of rag-clad darkspawn feet coming nearer. She swung the sword without hesitation, earning an undignified yelp from the man next to her as he jumped out of the way. 

“Watch it!”

“Sorry.” She would have to go for more precision and less force, Ren thought, wishing she wasn’t having to learn all this on the fly. Wishing for that sunny training ring back at Skyhold, the Inquisition surrounding her, the quips and the friendly insults, Cullen’s serious face as he pointed out an error, the Iron Bull’s bellow of “Again!” when she got something right. If she imagined herself there again … yes, she could see Cullen moving toward her, could almost feel when he would swing. She ducked, feeling the faint breath of air as a blade went over her head, and then she stabbed with the sword, remembering to keep her mouth closed, trying not even to breathe through her nose. She could practically hear the gush of blood as the blade struck, and she pulled it back toward her and then thrust again.

It went on like that, for so long that she almost forgot there had ever been anything but this—press your back against the wall, listen with all your senses, strike when you were sure a darkspawn was near, hope to avoid being tainted, hope to avoid hitting any of your friends, feel grateful for the strength and warmth of the man standing next to you, pray to a Maker neither of you believe in that you’ll both make it through this and see the ocean again.

And then it was over, as abruptly as it had begun. A taper was struck somewhere in the cavern, and the pale face of Cassandra appeared behind the flame, looking weary enough to drop. “Is it over?” she asked hoarsely.

“Aye. And well fought, the bunch of you,” Lieutenant Renn said in the darkness, his voice sounding pleased. “Where’s that mage?”

“Here.” A weak flash of light pointed up Dorian’s presence. 

“Got enough juice left to do some healing?”

“I … think so.” He was weary, though, and Ren could hear the cork pop on a vial of lyrium. She could even see the faint blue shimmer as he downed it.

And then there was light again, dim and spiky, but light, as Valta collected the torches and began lighting them. Cole flickered into life at Ren’s side.

He stared down at the darkspawn corpses at her feet. “They … weren’t in pain,” he said. “They didn’t feel anything.”

“Isn’t that a pain all its own?” Ren asked. “Not to feel?”

He turned to look at her. “Yes. It is.”

Next to her, she felt rather than heard the Iron Bull take a breath, and then his warmth was gone as he headed toward the light of the torches. 

“Are you hurt, Cole?”

“Hurt?” He frowned and looked himself over. “I don’t think so. Are you, former Inquisitor?”

“No.”

“Not in body.”

“I suppose that’s right.”

“Can I help?”

She studied him. With his greater insight into the Iron Bull’s mind, perhaps he could. “You tell me. Can you?”

He looked doubtful. “He doesn’t like to listen to me.”

“But he does listen, for all that.”

“I will try.”

“It’s all either of us can do,” she told him, and they moved together toward the light, to see if anyone had been injured.


	11. As You Go Deeper

The group reassembled around the small fire, not much more than a flicker of embers at this point. The rest they had taken had been completely negated by the earthquake and the darkspawn battle. Ren wasn’t sure she felt up to going on, and Dorian looked wiped out. Even his mustache was drooping, or so she imagined. It was hard to see in the very small light.

“Any more of those things around?” the Iron Bull asked testily.

“It’s impossible to say,” Valta told him. “I mean, yes, there are, because there always are, but whether there are any about to attack? I have no idea.”

“Too bad we don’t have a Grey Warden with us,” Lieutenant Renn said. “I hear they can sense the darkspawn, something in the blood.”

Ren thought of Blackwall, gone to Weisshaupt to be a real Warden at last. She wondered if he had made it, if he was happy, if it was everything he had always hoped it would be—or if it was the penance he had always thought he deserved.

“All the more reason to keep going and finish this task quickly.” Dorian stood up. When no one else moved, he asked impatiently, “Are you coming?”

“Right.” Lieutenant Renn got to his feet, reaching out a hand for Valta and helping her up. 

Sighing, Ren pushed herself up as well, swaying a little in the process. Dorian caught her. “Are you all right?”

“Fine. Just tired. And …” She looked around in the darkness, nearly complete now that someone had put out the fire. “I don’t like it down here very much.”

“It’s not precisely what we’re used to,” Dorian agreed.

From somewhere she heard the strike of a taper and saw a torch flare to light, her eyes immediately drawn to the brightness of the flame. And then another torch. Cassandra’s pale face came into focus behind one. “I agree with Dorian. If it must be done, and it seems that it must, we should finish it quickly. Valta, which way are we to go?”

Valta knew the answer—she was standing off to one side, near what looked like the entrance to a tunnel. It looked to Ren almost as if the dwarf was quivering with expectation. She almost understood—she had felt the same way arriving at the Storm Coast, being within sight and sound of the waves again. Perhaps the dwarves weren’t so different after all; maybe it was just that the surroundings were so opposite that made this Stone, the Stone sense, the endless dark tunnels all seem so foreign. Ren wondered what it was like in Orzammar, was it this dark and cold and narrow and choking?

“It’s a lot bigger,” said the Iron Bull, unexpectedly next to her, and she jumped, having been so lost in her thoughts that she hadn’t noticed him approaching.

“What is?” 

“Orzammar.”

“How did you—“ She cut herself off. Of course he had known what she was thinking. He always knew what she was thinking. Their whole relationship had been predicated on that assumption for a long time.

“Orzammar?” Lieutenant Renn asked. “Yes, Valta, I see you. We’re coming,” he said impatiently, although Ren hadn’t heard Valta speak. Maybe he always knew what Valta was thinking. He fell into step next to Ren. With the lieutenant on one side of her and the Iron Bull on the other, she almost felt safe, and even something approaching confident, for the first time down here.

Dorian and Cassandra were right behind them, Valta ahead, and Cole appeared to be trailing, although Ren worried about him far less down here than she might have on the surface.

“Orzammar’s a good place to get away from,” Lieutenant Renn continued as though there had never been a break in his thoughts. “If you’re of a high enough caste, you live in big palaces with a lot of rich food and fussy fabrics, but you’re governed by a strict code of conduct. And when they call the politics of Orzammar’s noble caste cutthroat, it’s not just a metaphor.”

“Metaphor?” Valta’s amused voice floated back to them from farther down the passage. “I didn’t know you knew such big words, Renn.”

He laughed. “I pick up a few here and there, stick ‘em in conversation to sound fancy.”

Ren smiled, the affectionate banter familiar. Then she felt the silent presence of the man at her side, the conspicuous absence of the remarks he should have been making right now, and the smile faded.

“So you do not envy the nobles their lifestyle?” Cassandra asked.

“Nope. Just their money. And the lower castes have their own rigid rules of conduct, in addition to having to scrounge for food and sell your children for a place to live and eventually ending up a thief—or worse. At least in the Legion, you’re fighting honestly, against things that deserve killing.”

“You wouldn’t go back, then?”

“Not for any reason.”

“What about you, Valta?” Ren asked.

“Oh, I can’t go back. I … got in a bit of an argument with the Shaperate. They wanted to erase part of the Memories, because a noble was paying for it to be done. Minor, really—one of King Bhelen’s childhood friends had ancestral ties to the Carta, and he wanted those ties erased—but I stood up and said I thought the Memories were to be preserved no matter what, not altered whenever someone with coin wanted them to be, and that was when the Shaperate suggested to me that I would do better exploring, searching for older Memories, than in Orzammar tending the existing ones.” 

“They were right, too,” Lieutenant Renn said loyally.

“Thank yo—Wait, what’s this?” Valta’s voice was excited, and they all hurried to catch up with her.

She stood in a large cavern, made of hewn stones carefully laid. The tiles were old, many of them broken, but once they had been beautiful—that much even Ren could see. A half-wall circled the cavern, emptiness lurking beyond it, cool and black and vast. And in front of them was a lift, much like the one they had just come from.

“Did you build this?” Ren asked. “The Legion?”

Valta was walking the stones, her gauntleted hand hovering just above them as though she could feel something emanating from them, her face lit with a smile. Lieutenant Renn was watching her, and Ren had to repeat her question before he heard her.

“Oh. No, not us. This … seems old. Older than old.”

“Ancient,” Valta said. “I’d say … maybe a thousand years old.”

“Really.” Dorian went to stand next to her, looking up at the lintel of stones above the entrance to the lift. “Amazing, that the craftsmanship could hold up that long.”

Cassandra reached out to touch the stone of the wall. “Many of the Tevinter structures are as carefully made. Without the work of sun and wind and rain upon them, who’s to say they would not have lasted as long?” 

“Perhaps. Knowing my countrymen in their current form, it’s hard to imagine them being able to agree, and keep their minds on their work, long enough to create something as long-lasting as this, but I suppose some of us managed, once upon a time.”

“Do you have any idea who built it?” Ren asked Valta.

Valta frowned. “This thaig is on top of a lyrium mine. According to the Memories, the mine was destroyed in some kind of unexplained disaster.”

“An earthquake?” The Iron Bull stepped closer, eyeing the lift skeptically. He appeared to be measuring his horns against the lintel. It would be a close fit.

“Possibly.” Valta patted the stones, studying the structure. “The miners must have used this lift to reach the lower levels.”

Ren moved to the edge, looking down into the fathomless blackness. She sighed. “If there is such a thing as a Titan, and it’s causing these earthquakes, it’s more likely to be farther down than anything else.” 

Behind her, she could hear the Iron Bull’s very soft drawn-out, “Fuucck.” She heartily agreed; farther down was the last place she wanted to go. But, as Cassandra and Dorian had said, the sooner they got done, the sooner they were out of here.

“’Our kingdom trembled at the Titan’s hymn,’” Valta said reverently.

“Fairy tales,” Lieutenant Renn growled.

“Memories,” Valta corrected.

The Iron Bull said thoughtfully, “So we think a quake may have destroyed that lyrium mine?”

Valta nodded. “It’s a possibility.” 

“Well, there haven’t been constant quakes for a thousand years. If the quakes stopped, either this Titan stopped making them because it got what it wanted, or the people who lived here then found a way to make them stop.”

“Good point,” Lieutenant Renn said approvingly.

“Then it appears we have no choice.” Cassandra put a foot carefully onto the lift, and then stepped on entirely. Dust flew up at the movement of her feet, but the lift itself held perfectly steady.

“Do you really think it still works?” Dorian asked.

“I have no reason to think otherwise. Many things in the Deep Roads are found after centuries still in working condition,” Valta told him.

Lieutenant Renn grinned. “We dwarves do nice work.” Shouldering his pack, he moved onto the lift as well. Dorian followed him.

“In for a copper, in for a sovereign,” Ren said with a sigh, and stepped on as well. It seemed firm beneath her feet. She wasn’t entirely sure she believed that this was going to work, and even less sure if she wanted it to. 

Valta got on as well, and then Cole, who looked down and around and over the side with interest. “It gets darker as you go deeper. Don’t you think so, The Iron Bull?”

“Stay out of my head, kid,” he growled. Ducking his horns under the lintel—and scraping the tip of one anyway—he was the last one onto the lift. Ren thought she felt it give a faint shudder as his bulk added to the weight already on it, but then Lieutenant Renn pulled the lever, which moved remarkably smoothly for something so old and unused, not even a creaking sound, and the lift was descending.

“Well,” Lieutenant Renn said, “I don’t know where this leads, but it looks like we’re about to find out the hard way.”

Ren looked up, but all she could see was the ceiling of the lift. Would it be able to bring them back up again? Would they be alive to even try to return? She had always prided herself on her bravery, but moving farther and farther into the dark unknown depths below her, she had to admit—she was terrified.


	12. Lost in the Dark

Around her, Ren could hear the breathing of her companions. To take her mind off her fear as the lift descended further into the unknown, she tried to focus on their breathing. Valta was excited; Ren could practically feel her trembling. Lieutenant Renn seemed unmoved, as did Cassandra. There was no change in either of their breathing. Of course, they were both soldiers, so that made sense. They had been trained to maintain their composure. Cole’s breathing was imperceptible. Did Cole breathe? Ren wasn’t sure. 

Dorian was frightened. His breathing was shallow, and he, too, appeared to be trembling. Ren wished he and Valta would both calm down—they were shaking the lift, and that was the last thing any of them needed.

Her Ashkaari was scared, too, and fighting it. Ren knew if she put a hand to his back right now she would find it wet with sweat as he worked to control and master his fear. Was the Qun helping? she wondered. Had his return to his own people made it easier for him? She didn’t see any positive result having come from it; mostly he seemed unsettled and off-kilter, his usual control slipping and his perception dulled. She wished she could talk to him, ask him to let this go and come back to her, but unless she could come up with a compelling reason for him to believe what she was so certain of, that Gatt had actually been killed purely in order to set her up, by Qunari spies trying to bring the Iron Bull back to the fold, there was no way she was going to convince him to give her another chance.

The lift’s descent seemed endless. All of them were silent, no growling or complaints this time. The air grew chillier, the faint light from above disappearing. Ren felt in her pack for the candles and flint, just to reassure herself that she could create light, even if only for a brief time. She resolutely drew her mind away from the question of whether the lift worked both ways. Of course it did, she told herself. It had to.

At last they reached the bottom, the lift coming to a surprisingly smooth halt. Lieutenant Renn lit a torch, but the darkness was so pervasive that even the warm glow of the flame barely penetrated it. He handed the torch to Valta, and gave another one to Cole, and they made their way forward into the blackness, very slowly.

“Do you know where we are, Valta?” Ren had tried for a normal, inquisitive voice, but it came out a hushed whisper, adding to the sepulchral feeling of the dark stone tunnels.

“No,” Valta replied, and her voice, soft with wonder, didn’t help the atmosphere, either. “These caverns seem to be completely forgotten. I’ve never read about them.”

Lieutenant Renn grunted. “Great.”

“I don’t wish to alarm anyone, but I believe we’ve all gone blind.” Dorian’s voice was tight with fear, but he’d managed a semblance of his usual flippancy. Ren reached out and squeezed his arm. He jumped at the touch, and then she felt him relax, his hand groping for hers and holding it tightly.

“It’s wrong here,” Cole said suddenly. “Too many whispers. The song is wrong. Cords cut to silence.”

“What in the name of the Stone is he saying?” Lieutenant Renn demanded.

“Best not to ask,” Ren told him.

“What’s your stone sense telling you?” The Iron Bull asked Valta.

“There’s a clear path ahead,” she assured him. “It’s dark, but empty, as far as I can tell.”

“Well, that’s something.”

“Personally, I prefer to be able to see.” Lieutenant Renn had moved on ahead. In the faint light provided by the torches, Ren could see the gleam of his upraised axe, and it comforted her that he was prepared for whatever was ahead of them.

“This is … past the Deep Roads, past the Memories … No one has walked down here in all of recorded history,” Valta said. Ren could imagine the rapt expression on the dwarf’s face, and for some reason it made her uneasy.

“How can you be so sure? Have you read everything?” Cassandra asked sharply. Clearly she shared Ren’s uneasiness.

“I just … feel it,” Valta answered.

“Sh!” Lieutenant Renn had halted in front of them.

They seemed to be in a larger chamber now, or at least so Ren thought. She’d lost the sense of the stone walls closing in on her from every side and now felt more of a breeze, more openness around her.

Lieutenant Renn was poised, axe at the ready. Next to Ren, the Iron Bull and Cassandra drew their own blades, and Ren reached for her daggers. 

Something seemed to be moving. She was almost feeling it rather than seeing it, a shadow in the edge of her vision. Of course, she wasn’t seeing anything but shadows, so it was hard to tell for sure, but she tried to track the movement as best she could.

“Show yourselves!” Lieutenant Renn called, and battle was joined.

It was difficult to fight when you could barely see. Valta had drawn back, still holding the torch, but Cole had dropped his, and in the scuffle someone had apparently stepped on it and put it out. Ren stayed near the Iron Bull—they were so used to fighting together she was reasonably sure of not striking him by accident, knowing his moves so well. Whatever they were fighting was well-armored. Her blades struck metal more than anything else, but occasionally she felt one slide between two plates and into flesh. The opponent made no sound when hit, which was eerie.

There was a grunt from another part of the cavern, and Ren heard Valta call out. “Renn!”

She redoubled her efforts, trying to take care of her own adversary so she could go to the dwarves’ assistance. “Cole, can you get over there? Cassandra?”

“Yes, I’m trying,” Cassandra called impatiently.

“Sod it all.” It was Lieutenant Renn’s voice, and clearly in pain. It had to be a severe wound, Ren guessed, given the dwarf’s stoicism. Her heart hurt for him, and for Valta. Clearly the two were used to being at one another’s side. She thought of the big man next to her, how vulnerable he was down here, with no armor and no stone sense, and the thought sent her into a positive frenzy, the extra energy allowing her to finally get both daggers into flesh, twisting them and pushing them further until she could feel the opponent’s dead weight sagging to the ground.

“No!” Valta’s voice shook the cavern, more easily heard now that the sounds of fighting were dying down.

Ren stumbled across the darkness in the direction of the voice, nearly tripping over a fallen body before she reached Valta’s side. She found Dorian there first, kneeling next to Lieutenant Renn. “I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do. The wound is … severe, and with the dwarven resistance to magic … I’m sorry,” he said again, helplessly.

“Renn.” Valta pushed Dorian aside and stroked Lieutenant Renn’s forehead. “This is all my fault.”

“Don’t be … ridiculous.” Renn coughed. 

“You deserved better.”

“It was … good enough.” 

Ren could see the two dwarves clasping hands, and she turned away to give them some privacy.

It was mostly silent in the cavern for a long time, while Lieutenant Renn’s breathing grew softer and slower and Valta’s weeping grew louder. At last, the weeping was the only thing left, and then even that stopped.

“Renn never wanted this life. He was a cobbler, and a good one,” Valta said at last. Ren could hear her arranging Renn’s body, standing up. “He only joined the Legion because of his father’s debts. They were too large to pay any other way. If he hadn’t, the whole family would have lost everything—including their caste. Renn sacrificed his future for his mother and brother.”

“The poor and desperate often sacrifice themselves for their family’s future,” Dorian said. “It’s the same story everywhere.”

“Yes. I suppose it is.”

“He was a good man,” Ren said. “We will honor his sacrifice.”

“He always seemed … indestructible.” Valta burst into a fresh bout of tears. “I can’t believe … after everything he’d been through …”

From across the cavern, the Iron Bull’s voice sounded. Ren could see the shine of his horns in the torch Cole had relit and was holding above him as he studied one of the fallen adversaries. “The armor on these warriors seems to have lyrium woven directly into the metal. And it’s bonded to their skin.”

Valta stopped weeping, her head snapping up with interest. “Really?” She hurried in his direction, crouching down next to him. “You’re right.” She gasped suddenly. “The armor seems impossible to remove, but I know what we would find if we did. These are dwarves. Renn was killed by our own kind.”

Ren wasn’t entirely surprised by this development—who would be beneath the Deep Roads, this far underground, other than dwarves? Perhaps some race that had developed here over time from a lost caravan? 

“Why would they attack?” Valta asked, speaking as if to herself. “We’ve never done anything to them. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Most people will attack invaders, especially armed invaders,” the Iron Bull told her. 

“I suppose. But … these are our people.”

“Maybe once, but if no one’s been down here in as long as you say, I doubt they think of themselves that way. They might not even know you exist.”

Valta sighed. “Yes. I’m sure you’re right. Still, it seems … wrong.”

“We should keep moving,” Cassandra said suddenly. “This cavern is too exposed.”

“She’s right,” Ren agreed. “And surely the sound of battle might bring more of these … ancient dwarves looking to see what happened.”

“I can’t leave Renn here like this,” Valta said. “We must return him to the Stone.”

So they arranged him carefully, and stood in a circle, heads bowed, while Valta knelt next to him and spoke words over him in the dwarven tongue. “ _Atrast tunsha, salroka_ ,” she whispered at last, smoothing the hair back from his forehead. “I’ll see this through, Renn. I promise.” She got to her feet. “Let’s go.”

They let her lead the way, although Ren’s uneasiness was heightened now. She had felt much better with Lieutenant Renn’s stalwartness and his good sense at the head of the group; his loss was a blow to all of them, and she would miss his gruff good cheer.

After a few minutes of walking, Cole caught up to Valta. “It sings softly under the silence,” he said. “The Stone took him back. He’s home again.”

“Somehow that brings me comfort. Thank you.”

Ren wished something could bring her comfort. Lost in the dark, with a dwarf she didn’t entirely trust their only eyes and ears … It might not be the worst situation she’d ever found herself in, but it came close.


	13. Perspective

They followed Valta along the winding path of an underground river. It was shallow now, splashing around their ankles, but the Iron Bull worried about flash floods. And narrow tunnels too small for a Qunari … and his horns. And lack of air. And broken lifts. And whether he had been too hasty in turning his back on his people—or on his _kadan_. 

She was holding up well through all of this, keeping her head and thinking clearly. He was proud of her. He wanted to tell her so … but he couldn’t. Not now.

And a Qunari wouldn’t feel the need to say so anyway, he reminded himself sternly.

But it was no use. He increasingly had the feeling that he had come too far from his people—all the things he used to believe in felt hollow and empty in the face of the memories of how happy he had been with the Inquisition. With Morvoren.

Had she really killed Gatt? The Iron Bull wasn’t even sure he knew anymore. He had been so certain, but … what had she had to gain, especially the way it had happened? She was too smart to have let things go just that way, too well-trained.

Ahead of him, he saw that the others had come to a halt in front of some glowing markings on the wall, and he caught up, not having realized how far behind he had fallen in the midst of his thoughts.

Ren turned her head and glanced at him when he came up, but it was impersonal—the boss, checking on one of her people. The lack of their connection hurt, even though he knew its loss was his own fault.

Valta was running her fingers lightly along the markings, her lips moving as she did so, her eyes shining with reverence.

“That say something you can read?” the Iron Bull asked her.

“It’s like the Wall of Memories in Orzammar, but it’s ancient. Very ancient,” she told him. She frowned at the wall again. “The words are based in dwarven, but it’s a dialect I barely recognize. I can only make out some of the words. The language is very different from what we speak in Orzammar, or what’s in the communications from Kal-Sharock.”

Ren asked, “Can you translate what you do understand?” 

“There’s a word that keeps repeating. Sha-Brytol. I think … It seems to mean ‘revered defenders’.”

It sounded like a pretty fancy translation for something she barely understood. Either Valta could read the markings better than she was letting on, or she was allowing her imagination to paint her some pretty pictures. Either way, she was dangerous.

“Defenders of what?” Cassandra asked. “What could they be protecting all the way down here?”

Dorian looked around, shivering. “Yes, and what manner of beast are they protecting it from?”

“Best guess, us,” the Iron Bull said.

Valta ignored them all, her eyes fixed on the markings. “ _Isatunoll_ …” she muttered. “ _Isatunoll_. ‘Cut our tongues.’ ‘Entomb our bodies.’ ‘Watch over the Titan until it stirs.’”

“So the warriors that attacked us are the Sha-Brytol.” 

“Yes, and they’re protecting a Titan.” Ren shook her head. “All I want to do is stop the earthquakes.”

Valta turned away from the markings. “No one has seen a Titan in countless generations. Few have even heard of one. We have an opportunity undreamed of on the surface, or even in Orzammar.” She frowned suddenly, as if something hurt her.

“Are you all right?” Ren asked her.

“Just … imagining what Renn would say. I can hear his objections.”

“There is little point in standing here,” Cassandra said, not unkindly. “Let’s keep moving.”

“Yes. If we find more of these markings, they might give us some answers,” Dorian added. He followed Cassandra, who followed Valta. Cole glanced at the Iron Bull and Ren, opened his mouth, thought better of it, and moved on.

“You think this is the right way to go, boss?” the Iron Bull asked her.

“As to direction, I have no clue. As to following Valta … we either have to follow her or we have to abandon the whole journey, and if we do that … the Storm Coast is going to be in trouble. For that matter, we have no idea how far these earthquakes might eventually extend, depending on the size of this … Titan, if that’s what’s causing these things.”

“Sounds phony.”

“It does, a little,” Ren agreed. “But Valta believes in it, and fanatic though she seems, I think we have to trust her. Renn did.”

“He was a good man.”

“He was. And he was following Valta, for all that he made it seem as though he was in the lead.”

“Good point.”

“Bull.”

He groaned. “I can’t. Not now.”

“We have to talk about this sometime. I can’t—I can’t go back up to the surface having you think you think I’m a murderer.”

“I do think you’re a murderer,” he snapped.

“No, you don’t. If you really thought so, if you believed it, you’d have killed me long before now.”

“You said that before.”

“It was true before.” She paused, looking up at him. The light was better now, more of it, and he could see her blue eyes turned up to him. “Bull, you have to believe me when I tell you that I’m neither that petty nor that stupid. If I felt threatened by Gatt—“

“You did,” he pointed out.

“Fine. Even though I felt threatened by Gatt, killing him wasn’t that answer. I saw enough killing in the Inquisition—I wouldn’t have killed a man in cold blood when all I had to do was write to Morris and he’d have sent me an assignment, and we’d have gone.”

There was logic there, he had to admit.

Ahead of them, he heard shouts and a mighty crash, and they both hurried down the passage, their discussion forgotten. A bridge across a chasm in front of the others had fallen, fortunately before anyone could set foot on it. 

“That wasn’t a quake,” Valta told them when they reached the others. “Someone sabotaged that bridge, and I don’t see any way to fix it.” 

The chasm was entirely too wide to leap, or to create any makeshift crossing mechanism. “Got any ideas?” the Iron Bull asked Valta.

“There’s a ledge over here,” she said, leading the way to it. She frowned down into the darkness. “I think we can climb down this way to that passage, if we’re careful.”

She did, did she? Clearly she wasn’t thinking about a giant Qunari on slippery little rocks. “If we wanted to be careful, we’d be up on the surface,” the Iron Bull snapped.

Ren reached out to touch him, reassuringly, then drew back her hand before her fingers had more than grazed his arm. Instead, she looked at Valta. “You go first, then Dorian.”

“Why me?” the mage complained.

“You’re the most graceful.”

“Hm,” he said, not sounding entirely mollified. But he followed Valta at a safe distance.

Cassandra went next, and then Cole. Ren looked up at the Iron Bull. “You go now.”

“Not a chance. If something I do dislodges anything, you’d be trapped up here. You go, and then I’ll follow you.”

“Bull—“ She wanted to tell him to be careful. The worry in her eyes warmed him, even though he felt it shouldn’t.

“Just go,” he snapped, more harshly than he’d intended, judging from the flash of hurt across her face before she turned and followed the others.

The ledge wasn’t as bad as he’d feared, but his foot slipped a couple of times on the way down, and he cursed colorfully in every language he knew. Which was quite a few.

In the lower passage, they found another carving that talked about the Titan, claiming that the Titan “sculpted the world”. The Iron Bull was skeptical, although Valta fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Ren played along, but the Iron Bull could tell she didn’t much care, Titan or something else, as long as she got to whatever was causing the quakes.

“So if the Titans are molding the world, is that what the earthquakes are about?” Ren asked Valta.

The dwarf frowned. “The quakes are destructive. Titans would mold the world, not smash it to pieces.”

She was a naïve little thing, the Iron Bull thought. Ren voiced what he was thinking, and surely Cassandra and Dorian as well. “Depending on your perspective, change can be violent.”

Valta looked at her, thoughtful. “I … suppose that’s true.”

As if on cue, another quake shook the passage. Little rocks shook loose from the walls, and they all stumbled. The Iron Bull caught Ren’s arm, unthinkingly, and pulled her against him, sheltering her with his body. When the quake had passed, he had a hard time letting go of her, the feel of her against him so delicious, so comforting and real in this nightmare of a place.

“The rhythm is louder than ever,” Valta said. “We’re close.”

She continued down the passage, the rest of them behind her. The Iron Bull stuck close to Cassandra’s side to avoid any further contact with Ren, physical or otherwise. His pulse was still racing from that brief, inadvertent embrace, and he wanted nothing more than to grab her and kiss her and not let her go.

Ahead, Valta stopped suddenly. Her awed intake of breath echoed in the passage, and as the Iron Bull caught up, he could see why. They were standing on what looked almost like a ramp leading down into a vast expanse of lyrium-lined rock. It stretched far into the distance, the lyrium shining with its own special glow.

“Do you know how many people the Imperium would kill to get their hands on this?” Dorian breathed.

“Or Orzammar,” Valta agreed.

“Or any country with half a brain. This much lyrium …” Cassandra shook her head. “It is dangerous.”

“It’s also completely untapped,” Ren said. “The Sha-Brytol use lyrium in their armor—where do they get it?”

“Perhaps they don’t mine it,” Valta suggested. “Perhaps they’ve found another way to harness the lyrium.” She yawned suddenly. “And perhaps we might want to make some kind of a camp. It’s been … a long day.”


	14. Here and on the Surface

They made a hasty camp there in the brightly lit cavern. After so much time in darkness, the lyrium glow everywhere was almost too bright. Ren kept closing her eyes to shut it out, but the light beat against her closed eyelids.

Before they had done more than lay out their bedrolls, however, the Sha-Brytol were around them, attacking. The fight was somewhat easier this time, since they could all see, but the lyrium was so bright and unnatural that Ren’s eyes kept watering, and she had to blink to clear them. The distraction was enough to keep her off-balance and unprepared for the Sha-Brytol fighters, who seemed to come out of nowhere.

The Iron Bull kept them off her, standing between her and people who were trying to kill her, the way he always had. Ren couldn’t allow herself to contemplate a world in which she lost him entirely, in which his massive bulk wasn’t constantly next to her. 

A Sha-Brytol appeared in front of her, and she stabbed a dagger at its face, aiming for the very small slits for the eyes. The armor these creatures wore was so heavy and all-covering that it was impossible to discern any features underneath it. And despite Valta’s claim that they were dwarves, they were taller than the dwarves Ren knew—taller, and very strong. Maybe that was the lyrium.

Even once the Sha-Brytol were all down, at last, leaving them all panting and exhausted, it was impossible to see underneath the armor. As the Iron Bull had noted the first time, the lyrium was literally bonded to their skin. Nothing existed but the warrior.

It seemed to Ren to be a very Qunari type of thing—each fighter was devoted to only that one purpose, their bodies permanently altered so that they lived as what they were. She said as much to the Iron Bull, who frowned thoughtfully down at the Sha-Brytol at his feet.

“You’d think that would be the Qunari way,” he said slowly, thinking it through, “but it’s ultimately wasteful. That’s why we have the re-educators, because sometimes a person burns out, can’t fight anymore, but they can be repurposed to something else, the way I was.” He paused, and Ren wondered, not for the first time, if he was thinking of turning himself in to the re-educators again. The thought was chilling to her, the idea of who he was being fundamentally altered to serve some purpose determined by someone higher up in the Qunari leadership. Either unaware of or ignoring her thought processes, the Iron Bull continued, “The Qun isn’t wasteful.” He looked at Ren, meaningfully. “They would never sacrifice a useful operative merely on the chance of gaining a more useful one.”

“The Qun in general might not,” she countered evenly, refusing to be baited, “but who’s to say that each individual interprets the Qun the same? An agent who has been in deep cover, for example, struggling to retain their identity within the Qun even as they pretend to an entirely different one. Just as one person might, say, romanticize the Qun and think of it as more honorable than it is, another might see it was willing to do whatever was needed to accomplish the task at hand.”

His single eye widened in outrage; he hadn’t missed her description of him in the analogy. She knew his definitions of words in his native language tended to be far more flowery than the same definition would be if given by someone else, and she strongly suspected that his insistence on the Qun’s efficiency and general benevolence was something he had exaggerated in his own head. But the Iron Bull chose not to engage further, instead walking over to the small group of bedrolls, where Dorian and Cole were apparently already asleep, and Valta and Cassandra were conversing softly, both looking rather tense.

Ren followed him, catching the last of Cassandra’s remarks. “I can’t help thinking there are more of them, perhaps smarter ones who will wait until we are all resting to attack again.”

“We’ll keep a watch, of course,” the Iron Bull said.

“Naturally,” Cassandra agreed, “but I cannot sleep thinking of it. Perhaps we should investigate the cavern a bit more, make certain we have looked into the openings?”

Feeling rather keyed-up herself, Ren agreed. “Perhaps you and I should go do some exploring, and Bull and Valta can stay here and keep watch?”

“Not a chance,” the Iron Bull said immediately. “Valta, you okay here?”

The dwarf nodded. “I’ll look more closely at some of this lyrium, and if anything approaches, I’ll wake these two heavy sleepers here.”

“Not asleep,” Dorian mumbled. “Yet. Ahem.”

Ren smiled. “We’ll go so you can rest,” she told him.

She and Cassandra and the Iron Bull moved down the steep rock formation, slowly, looking around them as they went. The cavern was very open, no passageways that Ren could see, or at least, not until they reached the lower level of it. Ahead of them the rock ended, a vast underground sea stretching out ahead of them, the waves swirling agitatedly. To their left, a passage led further into the rock; to the right, it ended in a long path that seemed to tilt slightly downward.

The passage seemed quiet, and fairly dark. By mutual decision, the three of them chose to follow the path, finding a pair of Sha-Brytol guarding a wall that cut the path off as it led downward. They managed to take them down, although it was notably easier to Ren to fight these things with Dorian’s assistance, as his fire and lightning did more damage through their lyrium armor than blades. 

As Ren and Cassandra dragged the bodies to the edge of the path and threw them over into the tossing waves far below, the Iron Bull inspected the wall. “They built this,” he said at last. “To keep us out, I suspect. It seems fairly new—and we appear to be the only invaders they’ve faced in a long time. If ever, maybe.” He looked around, and Ren could see in his face the curiosity he was trying to suppress. “This might be farther than anyone else has ever come.”

“Lucky us,” she said dryly.

“Yeah, I doubt luck is the word we’re gonna use when we get out of here,” he said.

Cassandra looked at both of them. “Both of you need to remember the things we have already accomplished and lived to tell the tales. Or allow Varric to tell them,” she added, the corner of her mouth turning up in a very small smile.

“Good point,” Ren said, forcing good cheer and optimism into her voice. “So nothing’s coming at us up this path, at least. That’s one good thing.”

“But there’s that passage back the way we came,” the Iron Bull pointed out.

Ren watched Cassandra smother a yawn. “Why don’t you go up and check on Valta and report on our progress down here,” she suggested, “and Bull and I will go look at the passage.”

“But I should assist you,” Cassandra protested.

“No, she’s right. Valta’s alone up there, unless she wakes up Dorian or the kid, and probably pretty tired. Better to have you up there helping her out, and we’ll go look into the passage and join you when we’re sure it’s clear.”

Cassandra nodded; it was obvious she was very tired. Ren wondered if she was also wounded—she looked very pale. “Have Dorian check you out when he wakes up,” she said. “Just to be on the safe side.”

“As you say, Inquisitor.” Cassandra caught herself with a smile. “Ren. I must be more tired than I thought.”

Ren smiled. “Evidently.” She followed the Iron Bull back toward the passage while Cassandra climbed up the rocky path to the camp.

He didn’t say anything to her, not that she had expected him to, even though this was the first time they had been completely alone together since they left the surface world. That seemed long ago, the memory of fresh air and ocean winds and the sun on her face distant and half-forgotten. 

They moved cautiously down the passage. There was no lyrium here, and the dimness was soothing after the almost-too-bright blue light in the larger cavern. There was also an odor, something that seemed familiar—sweaty and musty and … Ren cautiously sniffed at herself. There hadn’t been a lot of opportunity for washing down here, but she wasn’t quite that rank, at least, not yet.

Then she heard a grunting, and a shuffling. A path led upward along the wall, and she followed it, while the Iron Bull remained in the main passage below. After a few moments, she heard breathing, heavy and stertorous. Some kind of animal, but what kind? They’d seen no sign of even a deepstalker since they took that ancient lift down here.

The breathing grew heavier, accompanied by more grunting, the sounds first curious, then concerned, and then irritated, and before Ren could get out of the way, something was on her, pushing against her, something big that nearly bowled her over and ended up smashing her into the wall before it was gone. She lay there on the ground, trying to catch her breath, dizzy from being knocked into the stone, unable even to raise her voice to warn the Iron Bull.

She heard his bellow of surprise, then the animal’s roar, then a series of blows and a lot more grunting, and she tried to move. Nothing appeared to be injured, but she was still stunned from the suddenness, her limbs weighted with weariness and sore from all the walking and the fighting, and by the time she had herself sitting upright, back against the wall, the sounds had faded. “Bull?” she called, her voice hoarse and weak. “Bull?”

After a painful, terrifying few moments, she heard him coming, moving fast. “Boss?” Then, more worried, “Morvoren?”

“I’m here, Bull.” She pushed herself up the wall. It seemed like exhaustion more than anything else, as she couldn’t feel anything wrong, no particular pains.

He was in front of her now, and he put his hands on her shoulders, their weight so gentle and familiar that she wanted to weep, or to fall against his chest and close her eyes and sleep, safe in his arms. “ _Kadan_?”

His voice was hoarse with worry, with the love he still felt and couldn’t hide here in the dark, and Ren felt an almost painful rush of joy at the sound. “Ashkaari.”

“Are you all right?” One of his hands found her chin, lifting it carefully while he looked her over as best he could. The other hand probed at her ribs and shoulder before settling on her hip.

“I’m fine. Just stunned for a moment. Are—Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice hushed and distracted, his thumb restlessly stroking her hip. 

Standing so close to him was heating Ren up from the inside out, her knees weak with his touch and his nearness. If he let her go now, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to stand.

But he didn’t seem about to let her go. She could feel his head dipping lower, his breath on her lips, one of his horns scraping against the wall above her. Ren wanted to beg him to kiss her, but she was afraid that if she spoke he would remember all the reasons he kept telling himself they should be apart. So she held still, barely daring to breathe, until she felt him move just that extra inch further, his lips on hers, the kiss soft and hesitant for a moment. She heard her own whimper echoing against the stones, time frozen for a moment while they stood there.

Then he hauled her up the wall into his arms, pressing her back with his great bulk, holding her tightly against him while his tongue found hers. Starved for the taste of each other, they kissed hungrily. Ren wrapped her arms around his neck, holding on, feeling the tears welling up in her eyes at the sheer joy of his touch again.

Some part of the Iron Bull kept telling him what a bad idea this was, how he needed to put her down and walk away, but he could no sooner have done that than he could have climbed back up to the surface. Her mouth was so warm and yielding, her body familiar and rounded and soft against him, and for the first time since Gatt’s death, he felt right again, no confusion or fear, certain that he was where he belonged.

He wanted to touch her, to feel the heat of her, and he reached between them for the fastenings of her pants, wriggling them down, with her smallclothes, until he could find her core. She was so wet against his fingers already; it sent a stab of unbearable desire through him. Ren was moaning softly as he explored her familiar folds, and he couldn’t hold himself back. He fumbled with his own pants, dropping them around his ankles, and with the ease of familiarity they fit themselves together, crying out as he seated himself as fully inside her as he could go.

Torn between wanting to make it last as long as possible and the heated frenzy of his blood, he tried to hold back, but soon he was thrusting hard, pushing her back against the wall in his desperation. Ren was holding on to him, her breath coming in short, harsh pants and little choked-off moans, her hips moving restlessly between his body and the wall as she sought her own release.

They found the peak together, holding on to each other while their bodies calmed and cooled. Slowly he let her down, reality flooding back into his mind, the pain of her betrayal and the loneliness of their separation fresh in his mind. If he had been the crying type, he would have wanted to weep.

He could hear the faint sounds of Ren fixing her clothes, and he expected her to push past him, but instead she reached up, and he felt her small calloused fingers on his cheek. “Please come back to me, Ashkaari. Please don’t do this to us any longer. I—“ She hesitated, then continued, “Whatever else you believe, I need you to believe this: I would never have hurt you by hurting someone you cared for. Not ever. There is no one in the world that I dislike, or fear, or am threatened by enough to take the risk of hurting you, and there never has been.” He didn’t move, and she took her hand away. “I need you, Ashkaari. Here, and on the surface, and always.”

The echo of her whispered words stayed in the passage long after she had left it. The Iron Bull stood as if he had been turned to stone, thinking of what she had said. It had never occurred to him to look at the situation that way, to weigh her dislike of Gatt against her love for him. He hadn’t given her the benefit of the doubt, that much was true, and he had been so quick to doubt her—had that been more about him, about his struggles with the Qun and his renewed relationship with Gatt and his questioning of his place in the world? 

Whatever the truth, he had been an ass, through and through … and the worst of it was, he had no idea what to do about it.


	15. Exhaustion

The Iron Bull's head was still spinning by the time he reached the small camp at the top of the lyrium-lit cavern. Morvoren was asleep, as was Valta, but Cassandra was awake with Dorian. The two of them looked at him as he came up, and he told them about the big cow-like creatures he had killed farther down. Only now did it occur to him that they should see if the things were good meat—without knowing how long they would be down here, they couldn’t trust that their supplies would hold out indefinitely.

Both of the others looked far more tired than he felt, so he offered to go back down and butcher the things himself. He’d done it before, plenty of times, and the peace and quiet, and the escape from the too-bright light of the lyrium, sounded good. He was tired, too, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, and on Seheron he had learned to go without sleep for longer than most people were capable of. He’d had to—it had been too difficult to trust anyone other than himself with the safety and welfare of his men. Much good it had done, he thought, hunkering down and beginning to remove the skin off one of the beasts. Most of his men had died, and after—well, he didn’t like to think of that last day, when he knew he was done and he would either have to get himself killed or go find something else to do with his skills.

When you compared Seheron with the Inquisition … well, it wasn’t much of a contest, was it? Most of the Inquisition had survived, because they had worked together. Because Ren had trusted her people. 

Of course, she hadn’t exactly chosen them with care. Most of them had more or less fallen into her lap, himself included. She’d had to get by with what she had. It had been sheer luck that they had all worked out so well.

So what did that mean? Did it mean anything? He had spent his life thinking the Qun gave it meaning. When he was ejected from the Qun, he had lived his life as if it had no meaning at all. Somewhere in the middle, there had to be a place he could find comfort, somewhere that allowed him to respect the Qun and the people who had raised him, his old Tama, for example, and still live with the people he loved, Krem and the Chargers … and his _kadan_.

"’Tama, how will I follow the Qun?’" came a soft voice from the passage, and the Iron Bull jerked in surprise, nearly impaling his hand with the knife he was using to butcher the beast. Cole came from the passage, saying, “She replies, ‘you are strong, and your mind is sharp. You will solve problems others cannot.’ She smiles, but sadly.”

He remembered that day, a day when fear and curiosity and rebellion gripped him and he wanted so much to know more, to find out about other lands and other thoughts and other ways of living. The Iron Bull nodded. “Looks like my old Tamassran was wrong about me. Not as strong as she thought. I bet she’s pissed one of her kids went Tal-Vashoth.”

Cole closed his eyes, as if he was concentrating. “Agents with hushed tones. Eyes stinging, forms to fill out, course corrections, reduce risk of similar losses. I remember the little boy, too wise, eager to help. Words break in small, secret spaces.” He sighed, his voice taking on Tama’s softer, thicker accents. “’He got away. He got away.’”

“How could you know that?” The Iron Bull stared at the kid, all his old fear and distrust of Cole flooding back. “You never met her—how could you know how she felt? What she thought? You can’t know that!”

“Your hurt touches hers. You are connected, part of one another. Always.”

He swallowed against the lump in his throat, the strange emotion that filled him knowing she hadn’t forgotten him, that she had remembered him and thought of him so long after he had left her care. “Well, uh, that’s … creepy.” He cleared his throat. “But … thanks.”

“Do you want me to help you, The Iron Bull?”

“No, that’s all right, kid, I can handle it. Got any other words of wisdom for me?”

“She wants you to be you. But she doesn’t know if you know who you are.”

“Yeah, her and me both.” The Iron Bull sat back on his heels. “You ever find yourself stuck between one thing and another?” Then he chuckled. “Oh. Right. Of course you have. How is it, being a person? You ever miss being a demon … er, spirit … thing?”

“You still think I’m a demon spirit thing, The Iron Bull.”

“Not as much as I used to.”

Cole nodded. “It’s strange, because people remember me, and it’s harder to help them when I know they’ll remember. But I’m more to them than I used to be, because their feelings stack on top of each other and get bigger when they see me. Like yours.”

The Iron Bull grinned. It was an apt analogy. “Yeah, like mine.”

He was grateful for the kid’s presence as he finished up the messy task. They’d have a fair amount of meat to carry—he wasn’t sure how well it would dry down here, but they could have a good meal to give them energy for whatever was coming when everyone woke up and they kept moving farther down.

“Hey, kid,” he said as they trudged back up toward the camp.

“Yes, The Iron Bull?”

“You’re okay, you know that?”

Cole nodded. “I know you think so, and that … matters.”

Everyone was awake when they arrived, using some kind of smokeless kindling Valta had to create a fire. Dwarven ingenuity—there really was nothing like it. They were behind the Qunari in some ways, but so far ahead of everyone in Thedas in others. He proffered the slabs of meat, and Cassandra began cooking them.

Morvoren’s eyes were on him and he could feel the weight of her concern. It warmed him, he couldn’t lie. It warmed him even more that she didn’t ask. She knew him very well.  
Instead, she looked at Valta, who was trying to recreate the Sha-Brytol’s markings in the dust at their feet. “We’re fairly far beneath the Deep Roads. Do you think anyone besides the Sha-Brytol has travelled here?”

Valta shook her head, her eyes shining. “We are very likely the first to travel this far.”

Dorian got restlessly to his feet. “As long as we are also the first to return, it will be an accomplishment worth noting. Otherwise …”

“As long as we stop the quakes,” Ren reminded him.

“Must you always be so everlastingly noble?” he snapped. “It gets quite tiring.”

They were silent, looking at one another, and then Ren sighed. “Do you want to go back, Dorian? It might be worth trying, to get a message to the others and make sure that lift works.”

“And leave you down here without my fabulous presence? Perish the thought.” There was an apology in his smile. “I’m tired, is all. A nice thick hunk of broiled … something should put me right in no time.”

It did smell mouth-wateringly good. Now if only they could have some nice fresh water, or a mug of ale, to wash it down with. Or thick, sweet Qunari chocolate. 

Once they had eaten and cleaned up and repacked everything, they headed down to the barrier they had found the previous night. After studying it for some time, they managed to shake loose some of the foundation stones by means of Dorian’s magic and the Iron Bull’s brute strength, and then the barrier crumbled enough that they could climb over it. 

Farther down, and farther down, and farther down. Was there no end? Would they come out on the other side of the world, somehow? The Iron Bull felt almost dizzy with the continued darkness and the weight of all the stone heavy above his head. The waves crashing into the rocks below didn’t help, making him think of Seheron, and of the Storm Coast and the little house he had shared with his _kadan_ all too briefly.

A wave of weariness washed over him and he swayed, stumbling. A pair of strong arms came around his waist almost immediately, holding him upright, keeping him still until he had himself under control again. He looked down into Morvoren’s worried blue eyes. “You didn’t sleep,” she said softly. 

The others were ahead of them now, the torch bobbing along in the distance. “We should catch up.”

“I’m worried about you.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“I never doubted that. But … we need you at full strength, and health. Next time we stop, you have to sleep. Will you promise?”

He blinked at her. She was very beautiful. He’d always thought so. Without thinking, his hand came up to cup her face. He was on the verge of asking her to sleep with him—he always slept better with her. And then he remembered—everything, and he pulled away. “Yeah, boss. Will do.”

“Good.” He could hear the disappointment in her tone, however much she tried to hide it, and he wished things could be otherwise. He just didn’t know how to get them there, or what to do with himself if he did.

The tunnels seemed endless, the darkness closing in, the sound of the waves, usually so soothing to him, terrifying, because it was never the right waves, and the louder they got the farther down they were. And there were more of those rock barriers in their way, enough to wear down even his strength.

At last they reached a narrower cavern, quieter, because they had left the underground sea behind. Ahead of them, another drop, an abyss that would take them even farther down, and on the wall, a glowing message from the Sha-Brytol.

Valta murmured over the message, but Morvoren personally unrolled the Iron Bull’s bedroll, and took his hand, and tugged him down until he was stretched out, and sat by his side holding his hand, her grip fierce and firm when he tried to pull away, and then he relaxed and let himself forget and simply held her hand and allowed himself to be comforted by the familiarity of her touch, and eventually he slid into a dreamless sleep.


	16. The Body of the Titan

When the Iron Bull woke, everyone else was already up, preparing to venture forward. Valta and Ren were murmuring by the Sha-Brytol’s markings on the wall, and he went over to join them.

“Only the pure may pass. All others will be punished.” Valta’s finger moved along the line, hovering just above the marking but not touching. 

“I doubt the Titan would consider any of us pure. The Sha-Brytol certainly don’t, given that they keep attacking us.”

“I believe they are the pure,” Valta said. 

“You think the quakes are the punishment?” the Iron Bull asked her. 

Ren frowned thoughtfully. “There used to be a lyrium mine down here, but now there’s no sign the lyrium has ever been touched. The new earthquakes destroyed one of Orzammar’s lyrium mines. Do you think there’s a connection?”

“Why would they want to destroy the lyrium mines?” Valta asked.

The Iron Bull suggested, “Maybe they’re afraid of being disturbed.”

“Maybe.” Valta nodded. “If they think the miners might come further down and further in.” She looked at the markings again. “What do you think makes the Sha-Brytol ‘pure’?”

“That might be the reason for the bonded armor, to keep the impurities out,” Ren said. “Still, in the end it doesn’t really matter why they’re attacking us, or what makes them pure. We have to stop the earthquakes. That’s why we’re here.”

“Of course you’re right,” Valta agreed. “I just … these are also Children of the Stone. It’s as though they’re my kin, and yet I’m fighting them. It … shouldn’t be like that.”

Ren smiled grimly. “If I thought that way about other humans, Corypheus would still be alive.”

Valta stared at her. “That’s … a fair point.” She didn’t sound as though she found it applicable to her current situation, and Ren appeared not to think it was worth belaboring the point. She turned away to supervise the clean-up of the camp.

“You really think these Sha-Brytol are some ancient race of dwarves?” the Iron Bull asked Valta.

She was looking up at the markings on the wall again, that fervent shine in her face. “I do. I wish—all I want to do is talk to them. Why must they keep making us fight them instead?”

Privately, the Iron Bull was fairly sure the wish to talk and the curiosity to learn weren’t reciprocated, but she wouldn’t hear him if he said as much, so he kept his thoughts to himself. He wasn’t entirely convinced the Sha-Brytol were actually sentient, in the way that most people of Thedas would have used the term. They acted with purpose, but not intelligence. Maybe that was a function of not having been exposed to anyone unlike themselves in living memory; maybe they lacked the capacity. Either way, his job was to get through them and stop the quakes, and that was what he intended to do.

“You can’t let yourself be slowed down by sentiment,” he said to Valta instead. “Your life might depend on your quick thinking.”

“I know.” She sighed. “If … if we had been prepared for these dwarves, if there had been even one single mention of them in the Memories, Renn might still be alive.”

The Iron Bull shrugged. He had liked the dour, practical Legion lieutenant, but he had also recognized, one soldier to another, the look of a man who had been on the front lines too long. Renn had become too tired to keep fighting; it had only been a matter of time before a blade caught him in the wrong moment. Part of the Iron Bull remembered the days when he, too, half-longed for death, for the peace of no longer having to fight every day, battles that were never-ending against foes that were never decimated. Valta wouldn’t understand that, though. She was a scholar, not a soldier. She would think less of Renn for having been worn down by the pressure of battle after battle. “They have some pretty impressive weapons and armor. Few would have had a chance,” he told her. “We’re a good team; we’ve been fighting together a long time. That’s the only thing that’s gotten us this far. Renn was a good fighter, he just had a moment of bad luck, facing a better prepared enemy. Could have happened to anyone.” 

“I … suppose.” Valta still wanted to blame herself, he could see, and it was hard to talk someone out of that mindset.

Joining the others, they went the rest of the way through the cave and out onto the lip of an outcropping. Everyone else had seen this last night before they made camp, but the Iron Bull had been too tired to come look, so the scene unfolded before him with a fresh impact.

It was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Lit by a natural, soothing light, with ferns and other green growing plants, and open air as far as he could see, it felt almost like being back on the surface again. Even the air smelled fresh. He could almost forget about the massive amount of rock above his head.

“What is this place?” he asked Valta.

She shook her head. “I’ve never heard of it. It’s entirely possible that no one actually knows it exists. But … it feels right. If there’s a Titan down here, I think this is where we’ll find it.”

“Good.” They couldn’t do so soon enough to suit the Iron Bull.

They followed the edge of the rock around, looking for a way down into the rest of the country they found themselves in, and came to a platform, much like the one that had surrounded the ancient lift, and a ladder that led down. In the distance, the Iron Bull saw something—a pavilion, it seemed, some kind of built structure surrounding … a massive heart that glowed with the blue of lyrium, it looked like.

Valta leaned on the edge of the wall. “Nothing should surprise me anymore, but this … Wait. The rhythm I’ve been hearing, the heartbeat in the quakes. This is the source! I can feel it.” She frowned. “But … not the Titan. Where could it be?”

Ren, with her innate practicality and sense of purpose, shook her head at Valta’s disappointment. “May I remind you that we’re here to stop the earthquakes from destroying Orzammar’s lyrium mines, and Ferelden’s Storm Coast. If that … thing over there is what’s causing those quakes, then we need to go take care of it.”

There was no indication Valta had heard her. The dwarf was leaning farther over the wall, staring at the blue thing. “The Memories described the Titans as enormous, big enough to reshape the world,” she said, almost to herself. Then she caught her breath, turning to the rest of them, her face lit with joy. “We have found the Titan! We’re standing inside it. This is the Titan.” She ran her hands reverently over the stone of the wall.

“’Inside’? What do you mean, ‘inside’?” Cassandra asked skeptically.

The Iron Bull glanced at Cole, but the kid was silent, his face unreadable.

“We know we left the Deep Roads behind, and we’ve come down ever further since then, further than anyone else has ever come, at least, that we know of. And the Sha-Brytol began attacking once we arrived, because we’ve come to a place where only the ‘pure’ are allowed to enter—the body of the Titan. It has to be!”

She broke off when Cassandra and Dorian stiffened, looking at something over her shoulder. More of the Sha-Brytol, bent on defending the Titan, if that was what this was, from the impure.

There was such a sense of peace here, of lush growth and beauty, that the Iron Bull almost hated to raise his blade. But the Sha-Brytol were good fighters, very good, and they were fighting for what they believed in, at the very door of that belief. It was no time, as he had told Valta, to be slowed down by distractions or sentiment.

He could see that the others had similar thoughts, from the faint hesitation to the renewed determination on their faces, and together they managed to get through the fight. It helped that they had fought the Sha-Brytol enough to begin learning the weaknesses in that bonded armor, so they were able to strike more efficiently.

Still, they were all wearied and bloodied by the time the fight was over. 

“How many of them are there?” Dorian asked. “They seem endless.”

“Look at all those structures. There must be an entire civilization in here, generations of these Sha-Brytol,” Cassandra speculated.

“No! Oh, we can’t keep killing these people,” Valta said softly, distressed. 

Ren shrugged. “What’s so different than everything else we do? The darkspawn have a whole civilization, but we fight them, and the Sha-Brytol certainly haven’t seemed to be any more intelligent than the darkspawn—just more advanced in weapons and armor.”

Valta was visibly disquieted by the comparison, but she found it hard to argue the point without more evidence than she currently had. 

“That certainly would explain why they keep throwing themselves at us, despite the evidence that we’ve been able to handle all the ones we’ve already fought,” Cassandra agreed.

“Perhaps they’re the Titan’s Legion of the Dead,” Ren suggested.

The Iron Bull glanced at her, wishing she hadn’t made the comparison. It was clear to him that the idea hurt Valta deeply, because of Lieutenant Renn, because she had romanticized the Titan and the Sha-Brytol, because she wasn’t a fighter to begin with. “Don’t say that,” she whispered.

Ren looked at her, contrition written on her face. “I’m sorry. I only meant …”

Valta raised a hand, cutting off whatever else Ren might have been about to say, not wanting to hear it. “I understand.”

She led them all to the ladder, and then down, and in, and down and in, down ramps and ladders and stairs and across walkways, always heading closer to that glowing blue heart in the center. The Iron Bull found himself counting the rungs on every ladder, counting practically every step he took, knowing he was going to have to retrace every step on his way back to the surface. It seemed a very, very long way home.


	17. The Titan's Child

Ahead of them, more of those infernal memories were scratched on a wall. Ren was heartily tired of them. And of Sha-Brytol, and rock, and being thirsty for fresh water, and of longing for sunshine and wind on her face. She wanted to defeat this glowing blue … whatever it was, here in the midst of … wherever they were, and to go home.

But Valta was still entranced by it all. She stopped, her fingers hovering reverently just above the markings. “These are the only markings in this area,” she whispered.

“Did they run out of things to say?” Dorian asked. Beneath his flippancy, Ren heard the same weariness she felt.

Valta didn’t appear to have heard him at all. Her lips were moving as she translated.

“Well, what does it say?” Cassandra asked testily.

“Something to do with the ‘path of purity’. And … Titan’s blood? If I’m reading this correctly, it says the Sha-Brytol come here to drink it. Of course!” she exclaimed. “That’s how they are purified. They are pure because the blood of the Titan runs in their veins.”

Dorian frowned. “The Titan allows this?”

“You’re thinking of it like a god, Vint,” the Iron Bull said. “Think of it more like a … mother.”

“I see. It encourages them, like a form of worship.”

“Exactly.”

“I think it’s quite possible that it views the Sha-Brytol, and therefore, no doubt, us, as nothing more than irritants. Insects. Or … parasites,” Valta said.

“Lyrium,” Dorian said suddenly. “The Titan’s blood is lyrium.”

The Iron Bull looked at him with interest. “You think so?”

“Think about it! What do the earthquakes target? Lyrium mines. What bonds the Sha-Brytol’s armor to their skin? Lyrium. It’s everywhere down here—I’ve never felt anything like it. That’s what they do, they drink the lyrium, and it’s made them … whatever it is they are. They consider it purifying.”

“So these Sha-Brytol are as much akin to Templars as they are to modern dwarves,” Cassandra said slowly, working it out as she spoke.

“That seems to be the case,” Ren agreed. 

“Fascinating.”

As they spoke, the stone beneath them shook. Ren was thrown against the wall, nearly overbalancing, as it had been built for someone with the stature of a dwarf. The Iron Bull caught her arm, pulling her against him and holding her there until the earth stopped moving. She looked up at him, wanting to say something, finding that single grey dragon’s eye fixed on her with an expression she couldn’t read. Then he let go of her, giving her a nudge away from him.

She turned to Valta. “Lyrium, Titan, pure, they’re all just words. These quakes are killing people on the surface. We have to stop this!”

Valta winced. “Isn’t there another way?”

“Have you sensed any way, any way at all to communicate with the Sha-Brytol?”

“No,” Valta admitted reluctantly.

“Then what makes you think you could communicate with that … glowing blue rock over there?”

The dwarf looked down at her feet. “Nothing,” she whispered.

“Then I’m going over there to stop it. Come with me if you wish.” With her hands on the hilts of her daggers, Ren set out across the last bridge. A line of Sha-Brytol was in her way, but her people were behind her, and together, angry and exhausted and sick of all of this, they mowed them down.

At last, they crossed to the platform. Ren wondered if this would be as easy as stabbing the glowing blue thing, or if they had to worry about going crazy from the lyrium if it started flowing from the stab wounds, or if the glowing blue thing was more like a rock they’d have to crack. But apparently it wasn’t going to be as easy as any of that, because no sooner had they crossed the threshold than tentacles of rock began to move. A burst of blue light, which looked like it might well be made of pure lyrium, caught Valta square in the chest and sent her skidding backwards along the stones. When she came to a stop, she tried feebly to get up and then fell back.

There was no time to get to her, because the rock tentacles were moving, stabbing at them, and Ren and her people were rolling and scrambling to get out of the way. Dorian came too close to the edge and stood teetering there for a heart-stopping moment before Cassandra grabbed his hand and yanked him back onto the platform. 

A barrier of rock had appeared, cutting them off from the bridge back off the platform. Ren looked at the Iron Bull, both of them aware that the only way back, if there was one at all, was to kill this thing and then hope they could take down that barrier.

“To the center!” Ren shouted. “Stay close to it, that way it can’t throw you off the ledge!”

As the tentacles flailed, she could see a smaller blue egg-shaped lump between them. “Go after that,” she said. “Get at the heart of it, if we can. But be careful of the lyrium.”

Cole was flickering in and out of the Fade, dancing around the rock arms, and he stabbed at the blue egg. Cassandra joined him, and Dorian got his staff into play. The Iron Bull took up a spot behind them all, catching the rock arms on his giant blade, keeping himself as a barrier between the tentacles and his people. Ren joined him, and they stood side by side, protecting their companions.

At last it was over. Ren felt battered and bruised, and thought it was possible she had a broken forearm, from the relentless onslaught of the rock tentacles. The Iron Bull was bleeding from numerous cuts, and to her horror, she saw that a piece of his left horn had been broken off. He wasn’t going to be happy about that.

Cole had been closest to the lyrium at the center of the lump, but he had been mostly in the Fade, so he appeared unharmed. Dorian and Cassandra had escaped with only minor lacerations from flying pieces of stone.

Dorian’s first look was at Ren’s arm, taking it gently in his hands and knitting the bone back together. It would need time and rest to heal fully, but it would heal. He created a makeshift sling for her. “Nothing I can do about that, my friend,” he said to the Iron Bull, gesturing at the broken horn.

“That what?” The Iron Bull’s hand went up to feel the place, and he gave vent to a stream of curses in multiple languages that seemed to have been bottled up for quite some time, judging from how long they continued.

Cassandra cut him off in the midst of a particularly vehement string of otherwise incomprehensible words in Qunlat. “Look! The barrier is down.”

“Oh, thank the Maker,” Dorian said fervently. He hurried off the platform onto the relatively more secure walkway, and knelt down by Valta. 

The dwarf was stirring, moaning. She opened her eyes and blinked.

“Are you all right?”

Valta frowned, experimentally moving her arms and legs. She sat up, looking around at all of them. “Yes. I appear to be … fine. The … the song …” She shook her head, spreading her hands out in front of her and staring at them as if they were new. To Ren it appeared they had a faint blue glow about them. Valta got to her feet. “I am … it’s all right now.”

“That appeared to be raw lyrium that hit you,” Dorian said. “Are you sure you’re not harmed?”

“Yes,” Valta agreed. “It should have poisoned me, but I feel—fine. Good, even.”

“What song?” Cassandra asked abruptly.

“Song?” Valta echoed. 

“You said you heard a song.”

“Oh, that, yes. The rhythm that I followed here. But it is gone now.” She looked saddened by that, as if she had grown used to the rhythm.

“Have we stopped the quakes?” the Iron Bull demanded. “Can we go home now?”

Valta nodded. “When we entered this cavern, there was a presence here. I … don’t feel it anymore. The stone is silent. The rhythm has faded, and so have the tremors. But the song—it still echoes. It tells me things …” She looked out across the vast expanse of the underground world, her face rapt.

So she had been poisoned by the lyrium, Ren thought. She’d gone out of her senses.

“What does it tell you?” Cassandra demanded.

“The Breach—the Breach is what disturbed the Titan. It is calm now that it has a connection with one of its children. With me,” Valta said proudly.

Was this what she had come for all along? Valta wanted knowledge, it was what she had hungered for. Now she had it—or thought she did. Ren wondered uneasily what they had truly done down here. Had they destroyed an ancient being, created some kind of hybrid creature, or simply lost a companion into madness?

“Was that thing the Titan?” the Iron Bull asked. “Did we kill it?”

Valta shook her head. “The Titan lives. This was nothing more than an … echo. A guardian. You have silenced it.”

“I thought you said you were a child of the Stone, not a child of the Titan,” Ren reminded her.

There was a strange unearthliness in Valta’s smile. “I am not certain what I am, but the Titan recognized me. Like a parent, hearing the voice of its child.”

“Right,” Dorian muttered under his breath. He was edging slowly away from Valta, down the walkway toward the ladders that would eventually lead him to the surface.

The Iron Bull frowned down at the dwarf. “So we silenced the guardian, but what happens next time?”

“Titans do not stir easily. It has been a thousand years,” Valta reminded him. She lifted her face to the light that streamed through the open space. “Lyrium. We are taught that it is a gift from the Stone, but there is so much more to it than we ever imagined. I was sent to the Deep Roads to discover lost history. There is so much here to learn; I have only touched the beginning of what there is. Yes,” she said emphatically, as if answering a question none of the rest of them had heard. “I am staying here.”

“You can’t,” Cassandra said immediately.

“What about the Sha-Brytol?” Ren asked. “Aren’t you afraid?”

Valta shook her head. “Thanks to the guardian, I am … pure. I can defend myself. And I don’t know that I’ll have to—I think they will recognize me now as one of them.”

It made a certain amount of sense. Or perhaps Ren had just been down here too long. Either way, she couldn’t say she much cared one way or the other. If Valta wanted to stay down here, Ren found she was okay with that.

“What will you eat?” the Iron Bull asked more practically. “Where will you live?”

Valta seemed unconcerned by such mundane details. “I have my Stone sense,” she said, “and now so much more. I’ll be safe.”

“Best of luck to you,” Dorian said. He turned and started back toward the ladder. The Iron Bull followed him; Ren could see in his gait that he wanted to run, and was holding himself to a walk with great discipline.

“You have not thought this through,” Cassandra said. “That lyrium could be turning you into a Sha-Brytol. Or worse.”

Cole frowned thoughtfully, looking at Valta. “They turned themselves into monsters. The Titan chose you; you are its child.”

“Yes! That’s it,” Valta said. “Everything that has happened converged to bring me here. Here is where I belong. I wish—I wish to be alone. To commune with the Titan.”

“Very well,” Cassandra said, “if that is what you wish, then good luck to you.” She turned and followed the others, and Cole went with her.

Ren stood looking at Valta for a last moment. “Be careful,” she said, but Valta appeared to have already forgotten her. 

Catching up with the others, Ren said, “The Shaperate in Orzammar will want to know what happened to her. What do we tell them?”

Cole looked at her seriously. “Tell them the truth: You don’t know.”

Ren supposed it was as good an answer as any.


	18. The Way Back

They were all tired from the fight, but no one wanted to stop. Up the ladders and across the bridges they climbed, wearily, one foot in front of the other, not speaking. Just moving.

But when they reached the ledge where they had first discovered this strange underground wilderness, Ren called a halt. Forcefully. As much as she wanted to keep moving and get out of the Deep Roads entirely, she wasn’t ready to face that darkness yet. There was light here, and green things growing, and she wanted to rest where she could see her hand in front of her face.

There was also a very real concern that she hesitated to broach. As they were sitting around a real fire, eating the last of the meat the Iron Bull had cut off those beasts in the lyrium cave, she cleared her throat. “I hate to mention this right now, before anyone has had a chance to get some sleep, but … I’m a little worried about it.”

Dorian was nodding even before she finished speaking. “I thought of it when we let Valta stay behind, but I didn’t want to say.”

“How the fuck are we going to find our way in the dark?” the Iron Bull said, speaking for all of them.

Cassandra’s weary eyes widened. “Oh, my.”

“Exactly.” Ren glanced at Cole. He was her best hope. “Can you find the way back?”

“I … think so? It should be just follow the trail, remember the turns.”

“Sure, it should be,” Ren agreed, “but in the dark? How do we remember those turns?”

“I can try to reconstruct what I remember of the journey, draw some type of map,” Cassandra volunteered. “I did make an attempt to pay attention.”

Ren could see by the faintly sheepish expression on the Iron Bull’s face that he thought he, too, ought to have paid attention, but she knew how much he hated being down here, how barely in control he was—and that was without taking into account his distraction over the Qun and Gatt, and Ren herself. She didn’t hold it against him, any more than she held against herself a general lack of ability to navigate. 

“I will help you,” Cole offered, and Cassandra nodded her thanks.

“Good. Do you two want to do that now, or sleep on it?”

Both of them opted for sleep first, feeling that their minds would be more clear after some rest.

Ren and the Iron Bull agreed to take first watch while the others slept. They sat together near the entrance to the dark tunnel, shoulder to shoulder, in the most companionable silence they’d shared since Gatt was killed.

“Do you think she’ll be all right?” Ren asked at last.

“Who, Valta?” The Iron Bull shrugged. “Probably. She’s got what she wants, anyway, all sorts of ancient stuff to explore to her heart’s content.”

“That’s what I was thinking. I suppose it doesn’t really matter to her if she dies down here.”

“Doesn’t seem to. And with Renn dead, I don’t get the feeling anyone’s going looking for her.”

Ren nodded, thinking back to the Conclave. No one would have gone looking for her, either. No one had. But now they would; now she had friends who cared about her. Now she had someone who loved her. No matter what he said, the Iron Bull still loved her. If she disappeared down here, he would come after her. She knew that as surely as she knew the way a dagger’s hilt fit in her palm.

“Ashkaari,” she said, and he turned his head to look at her, his single eye resting warily on her face. “I will never leave you alone in the dark.”

She could see that he understood that she meant more than just the Deep Roads; she wasn’t going to abandon him now, in the darkness of his confusion about the Qun and her and what was real and what was right to him. She’d never had any intention of doing so, and she wanted him to know that.

“Never’s a long time, _kadan_ ,” he said softly.

Ren’s heart did a backflip at the endearment. “I know how long it is.”

“And if the light leads down a path you can’t follow?”

“Then … I’ll see you on your way.” The answer came hard. She didn’t think the Qun was right for him, and she couldn’t bear the thought of losing him to it. But if it was what he needed—could she stand in his way and still claim to love him? She didn’t think so. 

He didn’t believe her—she could see it in his eye. But he didn’t call her on it, either, just looked away, out across the vast expanse of open air. “Much as I want to get back, I don’t know if I’m ready,” he said, his voice low. “Someone I trust, someone I called family, killed Gatt, and because of me. I … don’t know if I want the answers, but I have to have them.”

“I’m going to help you,” Ren told him firmly.

“And if you helping means all you’re doing is obscuring the answer so I never know it was you?”

“You really think I could pull the wool over your eye like that, Ben-Hassrath?” Ren smiled, but the Iron Bull didn’t.

He held her gaze steadily. “You know you can. I have a blind spot when it comes to you; always have had.”

“You see me more clearly than anyone ever has. You’ve called me on my faults many times; I suspect you will many times to come. You want me to be a better person—I don’t call that blindness.”

The Iron Bull grunted, but before he could put together a more articulate answer, Dorian joined them. “Well, wasn’t that refreshing.”

“Better than you’ll get again for a while,” Ren told him.

“Sadly, I have to think you’re right. But for now, the two of you rest. I will wake Cole, and we will have a nice chat in which I understand either more than I want to or nothing at all.”

Ren chuckled. “Have fun with that.” She put a hand on the Iron Bull’s lower back. “Come on.”

He frowned, looking down at her.

“Don’t give me that look. I know what you’re going to do—you’re going to go and lie down and think about all this stuff swirling around in your brain, and you won’t be sharp tomorrow, and you won’t have solved anything, and sooner or later you’re going to snap entirely and run screaming through the Deep Roads.”

“There’s an image.” But he chuckled at it, which had been her goal. “So what are you going to do about that?”

“I have a few ideas. Come on.” She led him around the corner of the ledge, where there was at least the semblance of privacy, and spread out his bedroll. “Lie down.”

“Morvoren,” he said, but whether in discouragement or longing Ren suspected even he couldn’t tell.

“Hush. You want the Sha-Brytol to hear you?” Once he was on his back, she straddled him, leaning over to blow in his ear, enjoying the twitch of his body beneath her at the sensation. “Just close your eye. This is about what you need.”

She could sense that he still wanted to argue, but they were his own words thrown back at him, and she knew just what he liked, so soon enough he was past speaking anyway, as Ren moved down his body, hands and mouth building his desire the way she had learned to do. At last she took him into her mouth, feeling his big hands in her hair, the sensation so familiar and well-loved that she almost wanted to cry. But other sensations, equally familiar, were urging her in another direction, and her free hand stole to her own center, stroking in time with the movements of her mouth. At last she heard his breathing quicken, the faint moans he couldn’t quite hold back, and she redoubled her efforts on both of them, until he reached the peak, biting his lip to hold back the cries of pleasure. The fire swept through Ren at the same time, leaving her relieved and satisfied.

When she would have gotten up, his hand reached for hers. “Stay,” he whispered, already half-asleep. “Stay with me.”

It was an invitation Ren had no intention of passing up. They would both sleep better in each other’s arms.

And, indeed, wakefulness found them tangled together, wrapped around each other. It was the most restful sleep Ren had had in a long time, and she was reluctant to move. So was the Iron Bull, it seemed, for his arms tightened around her, holding her against him.

But the others were awake already, packing up camp, and it was time to go.

Cassandra and Cole had worked on their map during third watch, and so Cole took the lead as they entered the dark tunnel. He led them back through it, and up through the passages, all the way to the lyrium cave and its artificially glowing light. Ren had forgotten how much she disliked it.

“You know,” Dorian remarked, “this cave would earn a fortune for whoever claimed it. Beyond a fortune. More money than anyone ever dreamed of.”

Cassandra snorted. “At the cost of how many lives? To risk reawakening the Titan, not to mention the difficulties of starting an operation down here, and the very real chance that whoever claimed this cave would be killed very quickly by any number of factions anxious to garner all this lyrium for themselves.”

“Yes, yes, I know all that. I was merely … speculating.” He looked around the cave, shaking his head. “Few know better than I how little of true happiness one can gain from vast amounts of wealth.”

After the lyrium cave, they plunged into the utter blackness where they had first encountered the Sha-Brytol. There had been no sign of any of them since the guardian had been defeated, but that didn’t stop Ren from jumping at every unusual sound. 

The others appeared to be equally apprehensive. And the journey in the dark seemed to take forever, so long that Ren was certain they were totally lost, and would end up as nothing more than bones that someone would stumble over a thousand years from now. 

She was on the verge of hysteria when finally she heard Cassandra’s relieved voice saying, “The lift! We have found it.”

“Thank the Maker,” Dorian said fervently.

Ren would have thanked the Maker if she believed in Him. As it was, she was mostly ready to thank the builders of the lift, assuming that it worked and got them the Void out of here. They all piled on, a lot more willingly than they had when they stepped onto it to come down here in the first place, and Dorian pulled the lever.

For a heart-stoppingly long moment, nothing happened, and then the lift shuddered and began to move. In the dark, Ren’s hand found the Iron Bull’s, and Dorian’s on the other side, and they stood there, holding their breath, as it carried them up out of the darkness.

At last the lift stopped at the top, and in an additional joyful surprise, Ren found an Inquisition camp set up there, with a small group getting ready to take the lift down and come after them. At the head of the Inquisition team was Scout Harding, whom Ren couldn’t help embracing.

“Oof! Inquisitor, good to see you, too,” Harding said when Ren finally let her go. “Glad to see you back in one piece.”

“I’m glad to see me back in one piece, too,” Ren told her. “Have we really been gone that long?”

“Over a week.”

“No!” It hadn’t seemed that long … except when it had seemed like forever.

“Yes. The Chargers are up at the base camp; it took all my persuasion to keep Rocky from coming with us, but … well, I didn’t think it was a good idea.” Harding looked uncomfortable.

“Why not?” the Iron Bull asked her.

“He was … threatening to blow things up. I didn’t think that would help the earthquakes, and I didn’t want to authorize such a thing without permission from the Inquisitor. Er, that is, Inquisitor Morris,” she amended.

“Quite right,” Ren said. “I don’t blame you a bit.” She didn’t like the sound of Rocky’s reaction—could he have been going after the Iron Bull on orders from the Qun? She glanced at the Iron Bull, but his face was closed to her again.

One way or another, she vowed to herself, she was getting to the bottom of this when they reached the surface again. But for now, there was a keg of ale ready to tap, and a bright, glowing fire. They weren’t out of the Deep Roads yet, but they were among friends, and Ren intended to celebrate.


	19. Spycraft

Ren was glad it was all Inquisition people at the camp at the top of the lift; it meant that much longer before she had to explain to the dwarves what had happened. Or find a way out of explaining it. The last thing she wanted was to spark a whole new dwarven religion of Titan-worshipping, and have pilgrims traipsing around down there disturbing the Titan anew and pissing off the Sha-Brytol. Some things were best left alone. 

Harding asked her a few questions for the official report, but Ren fobbed her off a bit. If Morris wanted the truth, he’d have come down here himself, she thought. She had wanted to ask Dorian about him once or twice, but the time hadn’t seemed right. They had broken things off for good reason, she imagined Dorian saying to her, and that was that. She could see the unhappiness lurking below her friend’s seeming good cheer, though, and she hoped there would be time to talk before he hurried back to Skyhold.

In the meantime, Ren and her people enjoyed an abundance of food and ale, and especially water. She hadn’t understood how wonderful a simple cup of water could be until she went however long that was without a fresh supply. Even here, in the relatively civilized Deep Roads where the Inquisition had brought ample supplies, they had to be careful, but at least there was enough to drink and enjoy. She couldn’t wait to get back to the surface and submerge herself in the ocean, to take a long bath and wash her hair, and just soak.

In the morning, with Scout Harding in the lead, Ren’s party left the Inquisition camp, heading for the base camp, and then the surface. Before they left, Ren saw Cole hovering around the lift that had brought them up, looking thoughtful, and she hung back, walking with him at the back of the pack.

“Do you think she’ll be all right?” she asked.

“Who? Oh. Yes. She has what she wants. She has returned to the Stone, just … in a different way than she had expected.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Ren agreed. 

“But … no one else will.”

“Why not?”

“Because the Titan wanted to be left in peace. It wasn’t so much to ask.”

Ren frowned at the spirit-boy. “Cole, did the Titan talk to you?”

“No. Not really. But I understood.” He looked saddened. “It isn’t so different from the Fade, down there. Alone, and happy to be, until you see something different, and you want to know, but those who come after you, who are drawn to you, they don’t want to know, or to understand, and then you have to hide, and be afraid. I didn’t want the Titan to be afraid.”

It was a description of the human interaction with the Fade that Solas would have appreciated, Ren thought. She rarely gave much consideration to the disappearance of the elven mage—he and she had never been particularly close—but he would have understood where Cole was coming from. And then she realized what else Cole was trying to tell her. “Did you … fix the lift, so no one else could descend?”

Cole nodded slowly, silently.

“That was probably the right thing to do,” Ren told him.

“The Inquisitor wouldn’t have thought so.”

“No, probably not. Which is why we won’t tell him.”

“Yes. He will be happier that way. He will know that you took care of things, as you used to do, before he was afraid all the time.”

“The Inquisitor is afraid?”

Cole nodded again. “Not as you were, afraid for your life, but afraid that he isn’t good enough, that he can’t stand up to the example, or to his family’s expectations.”

Ren smiled. “That sounds fairly typical to me. Growing up, most of the nobles’ children I knew were the same. Morris will get used to it.”

“Shall I tell him you said so?”

“No need. He’ll figure it out on his own.”

Cole shook his head, looking perplexed. “I always think it would be easier if I just told you all how to fix things, but I'm starting to understand that you find value in finding the answers yourselves.”

“It’s like anything else you learn to do,” Ren said.

Ahead of them, she heard glad shouts as Harding and Dorian, in the lead, reached the Inquisition base camp. Interested in Cole’s conversation, she hadn’t even noticed the return journey. She suspected that was something the spirit had done for her, and she was grateful to him. The Deep Roads were wearying, and she would be happy to be done with them.

“Chief!” It was Krem’s voice, unmistakable, and Ren hurried to catch up to the others. She hadn’t seen Krem or Flissa in ages, it felt like. Among the Chargers, they were the only two she could fully trust, and perhaps she could bring at least Flissa into the discussion of who amongst the Chargers could secretly be a Qunari spy. Krem wouldn’t want to think that way any more than the Iron Bull did, and Krem hadn’t been trained by the Ben-Hassrath, so was even less prepared for one of his people to betray him, Ren thought. Yes, she’d talk to Flissa privately.

In the meantime, they were here, smiles on their faces. Krem and the Iron Bull were already smacking each other around in their version of a joyous embrace, and Ren hurried to give Flissa a proper hug. “I’m so glad you’re back. How was the honeymoon?”

Flissa gave her a very satisfied smile. “I promised not to talk about it.” 

“Sounds like it went very well.”

“But it seems as though other things aren’t going so well?” Flissa glanced quickly at the Iron Bull and then looked back at Ren. “The Chargers are a bit confused.”

“Are they?” Ren tried to remember back before they had descended into the depths of the earth. Had she spoken to the Chargers after Gatt’s death? Yes, but she hadn’t told them about any troubles with the Iron Bull. And she didn’t think he had mentioned it, either. “What did they say?” she asked Flissa, aiming for a casual tone.

She missed, or Flissa knew her too well, or both. “What’s going on?”

There was a sharpness in Flissa’s voice that appeared to carry in the echoing cavern. Ren saw the Iron Bull twitch his head in their direction. If he had heard, who else could hear? All the Chargers were here, clustered around the Iron Bull. She shook her head just slightly at Flissa, who immediately turned her line of talk to getting Ren something else to eat and some more water, and Ren wasn’t about to turn that down. She had a powerful hunger and thirst still. She hadn’t even really noticed down in the depths, she’d been so scared and so tired and so anxious to just keep moving and get the task done and go home, but now that it was over and they'd had to backtrack every single step, all the weariness and hunger and thirst felt as though they were crashing down on her head.

Dalish came over to the two of them, smiling. “Good to have the Chief back in one piece, and you, too,” she added, nodding at Ren. “Thought we’d have to go down into the dark after you.” She shuddered. “Rocky and Skinner were keen, and Grim seemed ready, but … I wasn’t looking forward to it.”

“I couldn’t say you missed much,” Ren told her. “I’ve had better vacations.”

“That’s what the Chief said.” Dalish frowned at her. “You two work on that line on the way back?”

“Great minds think alike, I guess,” Ren said wistfully, her eyes on his broad back. Maker, she missed him. 

Dalish’s eyes had followed the direction of Ren’s gaze, and now she said softly, “Stitches mentioned something wasn’t quite right between you. Anything we can do?”

Stitches? That was one member of the Chargers’ inner circle Ren had never suspected. She felt as though she had been struck in the chest. And if that was how she felt at the awakening of suspicion in a new direction, she could only imagine how the Iron Bull must feel. The Chargers were an area in which he was uniquely vulnerable. They were his family, the only family he had ever known, and Ren knew first-hand how long it took to armor yourself against what family could do to you … and everything you lost in the process. She didn’t want that to happen to him.

“What else did Stitches tell you?” she asked Dalish.

“What? Nothing, really. Just that the two of you were having some difficulties. We heard about the Chief’s old friend from the Qunari. Poor bloke. Tough to lose a friend like that.”

Stitches was looking the Iron Bull over now, and panic pounded heavily through Ren’s veins. She wanted to run over there and knock the healer’s hands off the Iron Bull’s body … but he wasn’t doing anything wrong. She would only make herself look ridiculous and anger the Iron Bull and tip Stitches off that she was suspicious of him. Would he take the risk of harming the Iron Bull so openly? Probably not. They wanted the Iron Bull back in the Qun, she reminded herself. They weren’t going to harm a valuable asset.

“You look tired,” Dalish said. 

“That I am. Flissa was just going to get me something to eat, and then I think I’ll stretch out for a long nap.” 

“Sounds like a plan. We going back up to the surface tomorrow?”

“If I have anything to say about it, we are,” Ren said fervently.

As she sat by the fire with a hot cup of tea in her hands, Stitches made his way over to her. “Just checking on you,” he said cheerfully, “making sure you didn’t bring anything back from the depths you didn’t want.”

“Like what?” she asked, her voice sharper than it probably needed to be.

He raised his eyebrows, surprised by her reaction. “Bugs, scrapes, infections, viruses … I could go on.”

“No, no,” she said hastily. None of those things sounded good, and Stitches was a good healer. Of course, if he was working with the Qun she was more than expendable, so she wouldn’t be taking any poultices—internally or externally. “I hear you and the Chargers know about the trouble before we came down here.”

“Yes,” he said, sudying a healing scratch on her wrist. “That looks all right,” he murmured, then went on in a brisk but clinical tone. “I was sorry about you and the Chief—you’re good for each other. But he never really dealt with that break from the Qun, so I suppose it’s not surprising to see it come up now.”

“What do you think about that, the break from the Qun?” she asked.

He shrugged, rolling her ankle gently, fingers probing a purple bruise. “Doesn’t really matter to me. The Chief did a good job as a Qunari, he’s done a good job as an ex-Qunari. It’s all about him.” He looked up at Ren. “He was happier with you, though, so I was sorry when Skinner told me you were on the outs.”

Skinner? Ren’s head was swimming. This was why she left the spycraft up to Ashkaari—she didn’t have the patience for all this who-told-you-what stuff. “No sorrier than I was,” she told Stitches softly.

“Yes. I imagine so.” He got to his feet. “Well, Inquisitor … former Inquisitor, you look as though you came back from the depths with very little damage. I predict a full recovery.”

As he moved on to look at Cassandra, Ren thought morosely that of course she hadn’t taken much damage in the depths—it had all been done before she left the surface. As for a full recovery … Ashkaari hadn’t even looked at her since they found the Inquisiton camp at the top of the lift. The outcome was not looking promising.

Under Flissa’s watchful eye, she drank a cup of hot soup, followed by more tea, and then was tucked into her blankets nearly by force and commanded to get a good sleep. Much as she wanted to get back to the surface quickly, she saw the sense in being rested first, and was really too exhausted to fight about it anyway. She was asleep almost before Flissa had finished tucking the blankets around her.


	20. Waiting for the Lift

The Iron Bull had drunk hugely, glad to be surrounded by his own people again, and had slept well, with Krem’s familiar whistling snore and Rocky’s sonorous roll of sound as background. It had been too long. He had been apart from the Chargers the entire time he was with the Inquisition, and while he didn’t regret the choice, he did regret the distance that had grown between him and them in the process.

Waking, he sat up in his blankets and surveyed the group of them. Krem and Flissa were curled up together, tucked into each other’s arms. The Iron Bull let his gaze pass them quickly, not wanting to dwell on his own _kadan_ and the loss of that relationship. Dalish was awake already and sitting quietly, doing her morning meditations—some thing she’d learned from her people to help her stay centered and in control of her magic. Skinner was rolled tightly up in her blankets and tucked into a dark corner, as hidden as she could be. Rocky lay on his back, arms and legs splayed out, snoring as loud as he could snore. Stitches didn’t seem to have slept much—he was brewing one of his potions over the fire, probably some kind of strengthening thing for those who had just come up from the depths. The Iron Bull could use it; he felt exhausted still, a bone deep weariness that he felt could only be relieved by fresh air and open ocean and the scent of growing things. Spindleweed grew in this area of the Deep Roads, and that helped some, but it also reminded him of Morvoren, and that didn’t help at all.

Grim was watching him from the other side of the fire, his gaze steady and dark and unreadable. The Iron Bull had always liked Grim, liked his silent dependability and the lack of backtalk—a refreshing change from the rest of the Chargers. But he had never really understood him, precisely because of the silence and the lack of backtalk. In the Iron Bull’s experience, people who didn’t talk tended to have a lot to say … and the less of it they said, the more it festered. He had always wondered what would come out of Grim when he eventually flipped his lid.

They watched each other across the room. There was an intensity in Grim’s eyes that made the Iron Bull think he was missing something, some sense of communication. Had that been there once? He couldn’t remember ever having a feeling that he could communicate with Grim without words, not the way he could with Morvoren, or Krem … or Gatt, once upon a time. Gatt had been such an angry man, all the time they had known each other. Up until those last couple of weeks on the Storm Coast, that was. He had seemed different then, relaxed, almost … happy? The Iron Bull had been so glad to see him, so glad to be away from the Inquisition and be back where he felt comfortable, he hadn’t thought to question the change in his old friend’s personality. Or why he was still hanging around the Storm Coast.

What had been wrong with him, anyway? Some spy he turned out to be. Gatt had played on all their old friendship, all the Iron Bull’s complicated emotions and sense of loss, and the Iron Bull had let him.

No wonder Morvoren had been suspicious—she had been doing the work he had failed to do. And he had been wearing blinders, wanting to believe Gatt was just what he seemed, wanting everything to be simple and easy and peaceful. He’d been trained better than that, he thought. His old Tama would be ashamed of him for letting his guard down so thoroughly.

The Iron Bull stood up, tearing his gaze away from Grim’s, and crossed to the fire, where Stitches crouched. “Some of that for me?”

“When it’s ready, Chief.” Stitches looked him over. “Have to say you came out of this all better than I’d imagined you would. Qunari in the Deep Roads, two things that don’t really go together.”

“Not my favorite place,” the Iron Bull agreed. “I’ll be glad to get back to the surface. Speaking of that, is there a plan for when we’re going up?”

Stitches glanced over toward the Legion of the Dead’s portion of the camp, where a circle of dwarves was clustered around Morvoren. “When they get done questioning her, I guess. I don’t think they’re happy with her answers.”

“Can’t imagine why they would be,” the Iron Bull said. He didn’t elaborate, and Stitches didn’t ask. He didn’t envy Morvoren this task, explaining to the dwarves why two of their number had gone down that lift and neither had come back, while the Inquisition’s entire team had returned largely unscathed. He thought of his broken horn with an internal sigh, but of course, the loss of part of a horn was nothing compared to the loss of two dwarves, especially one from the Shaperate, kind of a big deal for these guys, and one as looked up to as Lieutenant Renn. He wondered if Morvoren needed any help … but she would have asked if she did. And neither Dorian nor Cassandra was with her, so she must have chosen to handle the dwarves on her own.

She seemed confident. Her body was poised but not tense, and she was earnest but not angry. She was holding her own, and he had never been so proud of her. He wanted to tell her as much, to go to her and hold her when she was done—but he couldn’t. He had forfeited that right, and still wasn’t sure enough of who he was to try to ask for it back.

At last, the dwarven conclave broke up, and Morvoren got to her feet, bowing politely to the dwarves with one arm clasped across her chest. The Iron Bull could see the tension in her, how very much she wanted out of the Deep Roads and back to the surface, but he was fairly sure the dwarves couldn’t.

Culp and Marala, the Inquisition’s agents here in the base camp, approached the Iron Bull. “Serah?” Marala bowed before him. “I’m told the first load is going up on the lift in half an hour. Do you … would you prefer to go on the first lift?”

“As opposed to what?”

“Well …” she looked uncomfortable. “With the Chargers down here as well as the Inquisition’s team, we estimate three lift loads, just to be safe. The last quake … damaged the structure a bit.”

“Damaged the structure?” he growled, part of him pleased to see her shrink back. He hadn’t scared anyone with his size in entirely too long. “How much damaged?”

“We’re not sure. It seems stable so far, but we don’t want to trust too many people on it at once.” Her suggestion, delicately hinted at, seemed to be that she would prefer the largest and heaviest member of the party stay to the last minute. She wasn’t wrong, of course—it was the logical thing to do. But his entire spirit rebelled at spending any more time down here than he needed to.

“What does the Inquisitor—former Inquisitor say?”

Marala squirmed again, and Culp said, “She intends to be the last one up.”

Of course she did. His pride and his frustration warred within him.

“We told her it would make everyone happier if she went up first, but …” Marala squirmed again.

“Stubborn,” the Iron Bull summed up, with feeling.

Culp nodded. “Exactly.” He seemed to find it an admirable trait. 

“Fine,” growled the Iron Bull. “I’ll stay till last, and go up with … Lady Trevelyan.” Knowing how she disliked the designation, it was hard for him to use it.

Marala looked incredibly relieved, and she rushed off to organize the first lift-load. 

Krem and Flissa, Skinner, and Dalish went up first, with Dennon aboard in case something needed fixing along the way. The lift seemed to move awfully slowly, and it swayed alarmingly, or at least, it seemed to. Still, the Iron Bull watched it with longing, and then turned away. It would take a good two hours for it to reach the top and come back down, so there was time to kill. He found a spot next to Rocky amongst the dwarves of the Legion of the Dead, joining in their storytelling. 

Morvoren was closeted with Dorian, discussing the mage’s aborted romance with the current Inquisitor, if the Iron Bull was judging their body language correctly. And no doubt some of Morvoren’s own troubles with him, while they were at it. He was glad she had someone to talk to; he wished he did. But then, he didn’t, either; who could truly understand the turmoil he was in, the two poles to which he was drawn and the strain on him trying to resist first one and then the other?

The two hours went by at last, the lift creaking slowly back down. Was it the Iron Bull’s imagination, or did it list very slightly more than it had when it went up? Dennon’s slight frown seemed to indicate that it was more than just imagination.

He looked over those assembled, ready to be taken back to the surface, and frowned. “Lady Trevelyan, you still insist on remaining to the last?”

Morvoren nodded.

Dennon tried to mask his unhappiness with the answer, but couldn’t quite manage. “All right, then.” He pointed at Rocky, Dorian, Cassandra, Stitches, and Grim. “All of you, and let’s not dawdle.”

Grim shook his head, pointing at Cole. “Better. Lighter.”

“I’ve already got the Qunari on the last load,” Dennon said impatiently. “You go on this one.”

But Grim shook his head again, folding his arms.

“Fine,” snapped Dennon. 

“What about the other Inquisition people?” Morvoren asked.

“We’re staying down here until the dwarves and the Inquisition are satisfied that we’re all finished here,” Marala told her. “No need to worry about us.”

Cole looked at Grim, confusion in his eyes. The Iron Bull didn’t like things that confused Cole. But the spirit-kid didn’t say anything, and he did get on the lift when he was told to. It went swaying off up into the distance, the Iron Bull watching it worriedly as it went.

Morvoren watched it, too, and he could see the naked hunger on her face for the sea and the sky and the wind. He shared that hunger. “Not much longer now,” he told her, hoping it would be comforting.

But she could see right through him, as she so often did. “You saw the way that was tilting, and how concerned Dennon was to get as many people on it as he could.”

“I did.”

“You think we’re actually getting out of here?”

He shrugged.

“From you, that’s a no.”

He couldn’t deny that, either. 

Morvoren gave him a bitter look. “I could say ‘at least we’re together’, but somehow that doesn’t have the savor it would have had a few weeks ago.” She turned and walked off and left him standing there, looking at Grim, who folded his arms and looked at him steadily. Something in that gaze told the Iron Bull that he should have known all along that there was more to this particular Charger than there seemed. How had he missed it, a traitor under his very nose?

“You have something to say?” he asked Grim.

“No.”

“Good. Keep it that way,” he snapped. The dwarves were still telling stories—it seemed to be what they did best. Why that should surprise the Iron Bull, after Varric, he didn’t know. But he no longer felt any desire to join them. Whatever was to come, whatever Grim had up his sleeve, the Iron Bull would need his wits about him. He found a quiet corner and sat down to meditate, trying to organize his thoughts so he would be ready.


	21. To Find the Qun

At last the lift returned, moving in fits and starts. It was tilting slightly more than it had been the last time it went up, but not alarmingly so. What concerned the Iron Bull was that the first trip had taken two hours; the second, four and a half. And Dennon did not look happy.

Ren could read his disappointed look—he, and everyone else, had wanted her to go first. But she was no one now, just another Inquisition operative, albeit one with a strange glowing hand. And as a former Inquisitor, she had the responsibility to stay behind and be certain her people were safe. Morris had entrusted her with this task, and she was going to do it thoroughly and to the best of her ability—and when she got back to the surface, let him know by the first possible raven that she was done. The Inquisition could look elsewhere the next time it needed extra assistance.

Realistically, she knew she would never send that message. She owed the Inquisition too much, had too much invested in it, to truly remove herself from its roster. But it felt nice to think she would. It was something to look forward to when she returned, something to keep her mind on that didn’t involve the increasing perils of the lift or the certainty that the Iron Bull was not ready to return to her.

“Let’s get you on this and get you back up to the top,” Dennon said, nudging her along toward the lift. 

Grim followed, and the Iron Bull was behind him, watching Grim with a worried eye. Ren had been so caught up in the dwarves and the story she had told them about Valta—which had been more or less the truth, minus certain details—that she had missed whatever might have gone on between the Chargers, but between Grim’s glower as he looked down at her and the Iron Bull’s concern, she caught on quickly. Grim was the Qunari mole in the Chargers. And he had engineered the situation so that he would be on the last lift, already looking like a precarious ride, with herself and the Iron Bull.

Ren frowned, thinking it through, as she took a spot in the center of the platform. She was certain the Qun wanted the Iron Bull back—he was too valuable to them, or had been, to endanger. And they had sacrificed Gatt, however willingly, in the pursuit of the Iron Bull. Would they really give up so easily?

But then, the Qun wasn’t necessarily as guided by pure logic and conservation of resources as the Iron Bull insisted. Pure logic had certainly not dictated Gatt’s actions on behalf of the Qun. Who was to say that Grim would be acting on orders? Or that he hadn’t altered his reports to get the orders he wanted? Clearly he was intelligent; he had evaded the Iron Bull’s notice for a long time, and that wasn’t easy to do.

So if anyone was in danger on the way up, she was. Well, she’d been in danger before. And she would be with Ashkaari, who would protect her if he could. She believed that in his heart he was still hers, still the man who had left the Qun behind when it threatened his Chargers. But anything could happen, dangling there between the surface and the depths, and Ren had to admit that for once, she was afraid—not just for herself, but for Ashkaari, too, and for Dennon, who had not asked to be placed in the middle of this struggle.

The lift creaked and groaned as it began to rise. Ren felt a buoyancy rise in her with it, an anticipation of eventually reaching the surface and putting all this darkness behind her, but the dread of what Grim might have in mind dragged at her in opposition to it.

“We tried to get this repaired in time for your return,” Dennon said to her apologetically. “But without knowing when you were coming back …” 

“Or if,” Ren agreed, forcing a cheerfulness she didn’t entirely feel.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“The gears are stripping. And in order to replace them entirely, we’d have had to dismantle half the system.” Dennon frowned. “I can’t tell if it’s from the earthquakes and the extra strain they’ve placed on the system or the quality of the metal, which I wasn’t entirely pleased with from the start. It was such a rush job to start with that we couldn’t be too picky about our supplies, but …”

“It’s never good to start off with shoddy equipment,” the Iron Bull agreed.

Dennon nodded. “The dwarves tried to help, but that little cell of the Legion of the Dead down there have been pretty heavily pressed by the darkspawn, and we’re awfully far from Orzammar—they didn’t have time to send us any experts. I barely managed to get here in time to take over. When I got my cousin’s bird, I was in Starkhaven.”

“Your cousin?” Ren asked.

He grinned at her. “Robert. The Inquisitor. Didn’t he tell you?”

“No, it must have slipped his mind. Nice of you to jump to his command.”

“As did you, it seems.”

Ren shrugged. “The Inquisition is still my responsibility, at least in part.” Grim grunted, and she looked at him sharply. “If you have something to say, say it.”

He met her eyes, his gaze angry, but he didn’t speak.

Dennon looked at all three of them, frowning, clearly trying to figure out what he had somehow landed in the middle of.

The lift continued creakily up and up and up, so very slowly that Ren could have drawn artwork on the walls, had she been so inclined. After Grim hadn’t moved, Dennon had returned to incessantly pacing the edges of the lift, checking the hoists and the flooring and watching the darkness above them. If only they could have seen just a sliver of light up there, Ren would have felt so much better.

None of them spoke. Grim and the Iron Bull stood on opposite edges of the lift, arms folded, staring at each other, and Ren tried to stay out of the space between them, but she lacked their talent for stillness. She wanted to move, to climb the ropes hand over hand or make herself toeholds in the wall and haul herself up, anything to be moving, doing something. This everlasting standing here while a shaky piece of equipment did all the work for her had her restless and near panic.

At last, as though he wasn’t able to take the tension thrumming through her anymore, the Iron Bull reached out a hand and grasped her by the shoulder, pulling her against him. “It’s all right, _kadan_.”

“You don’t know that.” Ren didn’t like the way her voice sounded, thin and shaky. She prided herself on being more level-headed than this.

“Yeah. I do. We’ve gotten out of everything else together.”

She wanted to remind him that they weren’t together, not that that would have helped anyone, but Grim cut her off before she could speak.

“Was it worth it, Hissrad?”

There was a moment’s silence, in which Ren could feel the Iron Bull’s breath catch, his chest stilling, and then feel him letting it out again, slowly, his body relaxing. “Yeah,” he said at last. “Yeah, it was.”

She let out her own breath, which she hadn’t been aware she was holding. Hearing him say it out loud, hearing him acknowledge that the decision he’d made, the decision he been all but forced to make, was the right one … it meant everything. Hopefully it meant as much to him.

“You’re a fool,” Grim spat.

The Iron Bull was nodding. “Yeah. I could be. I spent my life thinking the Qun was the right way; the only way. But then they sent me here, and I started meeting people who didn’t know the Qun, but they were still honorable, still working toward making a better world. And they were happy. You happy, Grim?”

Grim glared at him.

“I didn’t think so. I wasn’t, either. Even on Seheron—I cared about my men, I wanted them to live, I enjoyed the time I spent with them when we weren’t fighting. We were friends. But happy? No.”

“Spoken like a true southern simpleton.”

“Is that the best you can do?” Ren asked hotly. “Insults? Is that what you killed Gatt for, so you could stand here and insult the Iron Bull back to the Qun? I think Gatt would feel he’d wasted his life.”

“You don’t know anything,” Grim hissed at her. “His life belonged to the Qun.”

“His life belonged to him!”

“And what a waste,” the Iron Bull added. There was pain etched sharply on his face, now that the truth was becoming plain to him. “The Qun doesn’t waste a resource.”

“It was the only way. He saw that.”

“Grim, what the fuck happened to you?” the Iron Bull demanded.

“Enough talk! Talk never gets anyone anywhere. Are you coming back to the Qun or not?”

Ren looked up at her former lover, watching his face to see if there was an answer there, but all she saw was more of the confusion he had struggled with for so long.

“I’m trying,” he whispered, painfully. “I … I don’t know how. I can’t seem to find the Qun inside myself.”

“Of course not. This _basra_ is holding you back.” The look he shot at Ren was venomous. When he saw it, Dennon stopped pacing the platform and put himself next to her.

“I’m not doing anything to him that wasn’t already started by you people. I didn’t make him walk away from Seheron and turn himself in to the re-educators; I didn’t kill his best friend in order to shock him back into the fold. You did that.”

Grim’s face darkened, and he lunged for her. Dennon and the Iron Bull both stepped between Ren and Grim, the Iron Bull’s arm shooting out and catching his former comrade by the throat. He pushed Grim back a few steps, but then Grim set his heels and shoved them both forward again. Ren thought how strong he must be to move the Iron Bull, who was nearly half a foot taller, as she scrambled out of the way.

The two of them continued to grapple with one another. Ren and Dennon had to keep moving to get out of the way, and beneath them all the platform was swaying alarmingly.

Shouting into Dennon’s ear in order to be heard over the racket the other two were making, Ren asked, “How close are we to the top?”

“Not close enough!”

“Can we speed things up at all?”

“Drop some weight.”

Well, that they couldn’t do, since the four of them were the only weight on the lift. And Grim’s grip on the Iron Bull was tight enough that they would both go over if he did.

“Is there any way to let the people at the top know what’s going on down here?” She ducked as a giant fist swished over her head. Grim connected with the Iron Bull’s stomach, drawing a grunt from the Qunari.

“No way I know of,” Dennon said. “They couldn’t do anything anyway.”

“So what can we do?”

“Tie these two down and make them sit still the rest of the way up?”

Ren rolled her eyes. “I’ll get right on that.”

The lift lurched and shuddered beneath them, the two combatants groaning as they tested each other’s strength. They were standing at the very edge. One wrong move … 

Ren’s heart was in her throat.

“Come back to the Qun,” Grim panted.

“I tried!” the Iron Bull protested. “I can’t. It’s … it’s gone. It’s not in me anymore.”

“Then you’re better off dead.” Planting his foot on the edge, Grim threw himself backward with all his strength. The Iron Bull had braced for the move, but not quite quickly enough, and the two of them hung there on the edge, teetering back and forth. Ren lunged across the platform to grasp the Iron Bull’s belt, hauling him backward with all her strength. She could feel Dennon’s arms close around her waist, feel him pulling her back as well.

With all their weight on one corner, the lift was tipping, slowly.

Grim was dangling in space now, his hands wrapped around the Iron Bull’s wrists. The Iron Bull, in his turn, was holding Grim by the upper arms.

“Bull!” Ren shouted. “Let him go! If you don’t, the whole lift will fall!”

The Iron Bull’s back stiffened; she could feel the breath he took against her knuckles, almost hear the protests going on inside him at the idea of what she was asking him to do. But in the end, the Qun, as he interpreted it, would have agreed with her—the most efficient result would be to sacrifice the one, and that one the antagonist, for the safety of the many. 

Slowly, the Iron Bull’s grip relaxed and he let go, leaving Grim to dangle from his wrists. He shook them, flexing the muscles, trying to force Grim to loosen his grip.

“Hissrad! No!”

“You started this, Grim. You and Gatt. I never wanted it this way. If you had just talked to me …”

Grim’s grip was slipping, but the lift was continuing to tilt.

“It’s going to go,” Dennon shouted warningly.

“I’m sorry, Grim,” the Iron Bull said, and he pried his former friend’s fingers off, throwing himself backward as Grim fell. His scream echoed for a long time after he was gone.


	22. Rocks in the Path

At last the lift creaked to the top of the shaft, the bare earth and the cloudy grey sky above it the most beautiful things the Iron Bull had ever seen. He managed to hold himself back long enough to allow Morvoren to scramble off the tilting lift first, but then he practically leaped from it, falling on his knees in the dirt. He only just barely restrained himself from gathering handfuls of it and smearing it over his skin.

The rest of the trip up had been a nightmare. With the violence of the shift in weight as Grim fell and the Iron Bull threw himself—and thus the others holding onto him—backward, the lift had tilted back and forth crazily, threatening to throw them all off, and at last had settled at a permanent list, while they held on to the bare boards by their fingernails, or so it felt.

Morvoren had tried to keep Dennon’s spirits up by making jokes, but the engineer had felt responsible for the fact that the lift had been damaged by earthquakes in the first place, and for its current condition in the second place … and hadn’t had the faintest clue what was going on between the Iron Bull and Grim.

For that matter, the Iron Bull wasn’t completely sure he knew what had happened, either. Grim had been a sleeper agent for the Qunari, that was definite. And it wasn’t as though he had never considered that there was an agent planted amongst the Chargers … and he had certainly thought of Grim, taciturn and standoffish as he was. But that had been a long time ago. The Inquisition had gotten between the Iron Bull and the Chargers, and he hadn’t thought about them as their leader for far too long.

Krem came to him, helping him to his feet, looking past him. “Grim stay down below?”

The Iron Bull swallowed. “You … could say that. He … fell.”

“Fell?” Krem’s face went white. “What happened?”

The Iron Bull told him, in a few brief words. 

Krem shook his head. “I knew something was wrong; he was angrier all the time, harder to reach. But a Qunari agent? Chief, you all right?”

“Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know,” he said. If he couldn’t talk to Krem, who could he talk to? “He was willing to die to bring me back to the Qun; willing to kill me. He did kill Gatt. That’s … not right. That’s not the way I understand the Qun.”

“Maybe he went off the way of the Qun in the opposite direction from what you did.”

“What?”

“Chief.” Krem looked at him sympathetically. “You’ve painted all these pictures in your head of the Qun—how honorable it is, and how efficient, and how it uses everyone in their best possible way. You really think that’s all real?”

“Well … sure.” But he didn’t know if he thought so, not now. Not after what Gatt and Grim had done. He wasn’t sure what to think anymore.

“You talk to Ren about all this?”

The Iron Bull searched the crowd for her, finding her shining red head in the midst of a knot of people. Dorian and Cassandra and Flissa and Dennon. They would care for her. He started to walk off, in the direction of the Chargers’ camp. Krem hurried to keep up with him.

“You’re leaving?”

“Yeah. I need … to think.”

“Chief, what’s been going on here? Are you and Ren no longer an item?”

“No. Not anymore.”

“Because you’re trying to go back to the Qun?”

“Damn it, Krem, because I don’t know who the fuck I am!” the Iron Bull bellowed, stopping short and letting his lieutenant run into him. “All right?”

Krem looked at him with concern. “Yeah. All right. You want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Fine.” Krem began to walk off, hands shoved into his pockets.

The Iron Bull watched him go, trudging away, and felt so alone, so isolated. He had never done well alone—he needed people, needed to talk through the things going on in his head. “Krem, wait.”

“Yeah, Chief?”

“I … do want to talk about it.”

“You want to spar while we do it?”

He was grateful for his second-in-command’s knowledge of him and understanding. “Yeah.”

“Let me get my gear and tell Flissa where I’m going.”

“Krem!”

“Yeah?”

“Get her to stay with … the former Inquisitor tonight, will you? I … don’t want her to be alone.”

“You got it, Chief.”  
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  
Ren watched the Iron Bull go, trying to hide the crushing disappointment she felt. After all they had been through in the Deep Roads, after the fight on the lift, after his admission that he didn’t regret what had happened to separate him from the Qun … he could still turn and walk away from her without a word. 

“You all right?” Flissa asked her softly.

“Yes. No.”

“Which is it?”

Ren turned and looked at her friend, letting as much as she could of the turmoil of her emotions show on her face and in her eyes.

“No, then,” Flissa responded. “Shall I get you out of here?”

“Yeah. Maybe so.”

“Won’t be easy; everyone’s going to want to talk to you.”

Ren nodded; she had figured that out already. Gesturing to Cassandra, she pulled the former Seeker aside. “Can you deal with these people and their questions, and report back to Morris? I …” She hated to admit she was too exhausted and drained to finish the job. Cassandra had been through everything she had, and must be equally tired.

“I shall,” Cassandra said. She put a reassuring hand on Ren’s shoulder. “I will also say your good-byes to Cole … when he resurfaces.”

“Did he go with the Iron Bull?”

“I didn’t see him, but that is what I would expect. Take care of yourself, my friend.”

“You, too. Are you … staying on with the Inquisition?”

“I do work for them occasionally, when my own project allows.”

“And how goes the rebuilding of the Seekers? You’d think there would have been time to find all this out, all that time down there …”

Cassandra chuckled. “It was hardly the occasion for small talk. The Seekers are coming together. It is … not easy, tearing something down and then rebuilding it again, one has to constantly wonder which parts are worth saving and which parts can be dispensed with.”

“If anyone can do it, you can.”

“Thank you. I appreciate your confidence. And may I say, I think the same of you.” She glanced off in the direction the Iron Bull had gone. “His heart leads him in your direction, but he is very much a creature of the head. It is difficult for him to be certain that following his heart is the right direction.”

“I know. I think he’ll come around … but I’m afraid he won’t.”

“Fear never solved anything,” Cassandra said, squeezing her shoulder. “I will see you again soon, my friend.”

“Yes.” Ren thought that ‘soon’ was probably a relative term, but she appreciated the sentiment behind the hope, and agreed. 

Dorian gave her a long hug, whispering in her ear, “Don’t give up hope.”

“I won’t.”

“And … think of me often, will you? I don’t know if Tevinter is ready for me—or vice versa.”

“I’ll keep all the best thoughts in my head,” Ren promised him. “And you be careful. They won’t all be glad to have you back.”

“I will watch myself like a hawk, I assure you.”

And they were gone, her last ties with the Inquisition. She intended to refuse any further invitations from Morris—he was going to have to stand on his own two feet now, without turning to her to resolve his thornier problems. She flexed her left hand, where the Anchor still shone, and inwardly amended the thought—should the Veil tear again and the power of the Anchor be required, she was bound to assist. But anything short of that was officially no longer her problem.

The Chargers were huddled in a little knot together, talking amongst themselves. At last, Dalish extricated herself and approached Ren and Flissa. “They want me to ask you what happened to Grim.”

Ren nodded, having expected the question. “He was a sleeper agent for the Qunari. He killed the Iron Bull’s friend Gatt and framed me for it, to try to bring the Iron Bull back to the Qun, and when that didn’t work the way he had hoped, he attacked the Iron Bull on the lift to the surface.” She considered describing some of the fight, but that wouldn’t really help anyone, so she settled for a simple, “He lost.”

“So we gathered,” Dalish said dryly. “How’s the Chief?”

Shaking her head helplessly, Ren said, “He has Krem with him, and if Krem can’t get him turned around and help him straighten his head out, then we’re in real trouble. But … I hope he can.”

Skinner had approached while she was talking, and she interjected sharply, “Even if it means he goes back to the Qun, or to the Chargers, and leaves you behind?”

Ren swallowed painfully. She didn’t want to contemplate that possibility, but … it existed. “Yes,” she said at last. “Even if it means that.”

“Huh,” the elf grunted, not appearing convinced by the response.

“I think we all hope it doesn’t come to that,” Flissa said. “I don’t know the Iron Bull as well as the rest of you, but I know he’s been away from the Qun for a long time, and he’s … he seemed happier with Ren than he did before.”

Rocky nodded his agreement. “Trying to be both things, Qunari and merc captain, had his head twisted around pretty far. It was better when he was only one.” He smiled. “And I think he likes his comforts too much to go Qunari—his comforts and his people,” he added, looking at Ren. “I think he’ll figure that out, too, but he has to get there himself. Best thing we can do is go back to camp and think about getting back to work, taking on one of those jobs waiting for us, and be there ready for him to come back.”

“Good point,” Dalish said approvingly. “Let’s go.” She squeezed Ren’s arm before leading the Chargers down the hill toward their camp. Ren was glad to see they all went willingly, and without any grumbling or glares cast her way. Hopefully that meant if things with the Iron Bull did get back to normal, they wouldn’t hold any of this against her.

But who was she kidding? She didn’t care if they blamed her for everything from a stubbed toe to the First Blight, if the Iron Bull would just come back. 

Flissa put her arms around her as she tried to blink back her tears. “Let’s get back to that cabin of yours and wait. My Krem will bring him around eventually, trust me. He could talk a Rivaini pirate into joining the Chantry.”

“I hope you’re right, Flissa. I just … I don’t know what I’ll do if I have to—if he doesn’t …” Clinging to her friend, Ren dissolved into the tears that had been threatening ever since Gatt had showed up the first time.  
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________  
Near the cave he had been staying in after Gatt’s death, the Iron Bull and Krem found a clearing and strapped on wooden practice shields. “You ready, Krem de la Crème?”

“Always, Chief.”

“Big talk. Let’s see if you can stand up under it.” 

He attacked, and Krem staggered back a few steps before returning the attack. They danced back and forth a bit.

Out of the trees, Cole’s voice came. “Tiring the body sharpens the mind, The Iron Bull. Why?”

“I don’t know. Gives you something to focus on while the back of your mind works on stuff the front of your mind won’t usually let it do.”

“So the pain is less because you’re looking at it from the side and not straight on?”

“Yeah,” the Iron Bull snapped impatiently, “but you drawing a bull’s-eye on it isn’t helping the process.”

“Oh.” Cole subsided and watched the sparring for a few minutes before interrupting again. “The Iron Bull, why don’t you just choose which path made you the happiest?”

“Because it doesn’t work that way,” roared the Iron Bull, shoving Krem back with all his strength.

Krem regained his footing and frowned thoughtfully. “Can’t really say I see why not, Chief. If the question is who you really are, doesn’t your happiness define you? Your contentment?”

“Maybe who you really are is where you can be of most use.”

“And you think that’s the Qun?”

“Yeah. Maybe. I … don’t know.”

“Well …” Krem drew the word out, clearly thinking through what he wanted to say. “If the Qun was using you efficiently, and the Qun sent you here … doesn’t that mean this is where you’re of most use?”

The Iron Bull narrowed his eye. That sounded plausible, but it also sounded too easy.

“You keep expecting the path to be full of stones to climb over, The Iron Bull,” Cole noted. “But most people want the path to be clear of stones.”

“I’m not most people.”

“No,” Cole agreed sorrowfully. “You seem to cling more closely to your pain than most people. I try and try to help, but … you really don’t want me to.”

“I want to do it myself.”

“Yes, but doing it yourself seems to add more pain, and you like it that way. What if you tried liking not adding pain?”

The Iron Bull turned his head to look at the spirit-boy, wondering if the kid had learned about sarcasm and was mocking him. But Cole’s face was clear, if puzzled—he obviously meant the question sincerely. So the Iron Bull tried to think of a response with the same level of sincerity. Slowly, he said, “I guess because a life without challenges makes you soft, takes away the edge, so when the challenge comes, you’re not ready. Not prepared. If you’re constantly climbing over those rocks of yours, you don’t get used to the clear path. If the path is always clear and you come to a rock, how do you know what to do?”

“What if you spend your whole life preparing for the rock, and it never shows up?” Krem asked. “Or what if, instead of the rock you’re ready for, you find a bear?”

“This is starting to make my head hurt.” The Iron Bull rubbed his temples.

“But is it helping?”

He sighed. “Not really.” 

“Cool water, fresh spray in the face, laughter. _Kadan_. Nowhere better to be.” Cole frowned at him. “You long for it, The Iron Bull—why is it not enough?”

“Because I don’t deserve it, all right!” he bellowed. “Because I failed in Seheron, I fucking gave up, and people are dying there every day because I wasn’t strong enough. Why do I get to be happy, to wallow in sex and good food and laughter, when friends of mine are still there, still fighting?”

There was a silence when his outburst was over, both of them looking at him in surprise as he stood there panting with the force of his emotions.

“Well, fuck,” he said at last, softly. “Who knew that was still there?”

Cole started to speak, but stopped himself.

“Yeah, yeah, you did. Don’t get smug.”


	23. An Honorable Man

It took the Iron Bull a few days to wrap his head around the bitterness and the anger and the guilt that still haunted him, his sense of failure on Seheron and the feeling that he had given up when he submitted himself for re-education. Beneath that lay his deep belief in the honor and the efficiency at the heart of the Qun. He remembered, long ago on the battlement at Skyhold, Movoren telling him that he didn’t need anyone’s permission to be an honorable man—that he could live by the Qun whether the Qun recognized him or not. But he was no longer sure that he wanted to live by the Qun, or that he truly understood it in its entirety in the first place.

He was conscious of a burning desire to learn more—more about the Qun, about Andrasteanism, about the dwarves’ Stone, to understand what it was that drew people to their various belief systems and what the real differences were. The Storm Coast offered little in the way of a library, but he could easily send to Skyhold and order books through there, or dispatch Krem off to Denerim or Val Royeaux to bring things back for him.

In the meantime, the real question was whether he was ready to recommit himself to his _kadan_ … and, even more urgently, whether she would take him back in the first place. Krem assured him she would; Cole said a bunch of weird crap that seemed to indicate that she would—but he had hurt her deeply, time after time, and he wasn’t sure he deserved her forgiveness, just as he wasn’t sure he deserved the happiness of a life with her to begin with.

The Iron Bull was grateful for the presence of Krem and Cole at his side—their silences, their arguments, their assurances—as he paced back and forth across the clearing for the better part of two days.

But at the end of the two days, he came out of his cave to find that Krem and Cole had been replaced by a far more formidable companion in a time like this: Dorian.

The Vint had his arms folded across his chest, his grey eyes icy as he waited for the Iron Bull to come out of the cave. 

“Thought you went back to Skyhold,” the Iron Bull said.

“Yes, I was going to, and then I noticed that you were being a horse’s ass, and I decided my particular brand of encouragement was needed.”

“Good start.”

“Just wait until I really get started.”

The Iron Bull folded his own arms across his chest, waiting, and the two of them stared at each other. 

“Hasn’t she been through enough?” Dorian asked.

“It's not about her.”

“And yet she’s bearing the brunt of your issues, and being remarkably patient at it. Patience, may I remind you, is not one of her notable virtues.”

“No, it isn’t,” the Iron Bull agreed.

“So?”

“It’s not so easy as all that.”

“Easy?” Dorian practically growled the word. “Easy for whom? This is all about you, and your ease and convenience. Have you thought about her at all?”

“Yes!”

“Really.”

Under the intensity of Dorian’s glare, the Iron Bull flushed and looked away. “Not as much as I have about myself,” he admitted reluctantly. 

“Look, we get it. You needed to work through who you are without the Qun. I’ve been there; at the end, I decided that I am Tevinter through and through, and I’m going home. Which dovetails nicely with Robert deciding that he is the Inquisitor. But there’s time for self-examination, and there’s time for realizing what you’re doing to the person who cares about you above everything else in the world—and you have reached that point. Either you’re ready to go back, right now, or you need to tell her that you can no longer be what she needs.”

The Vint’s words sent a chill through the Iron Bull. Because he wasn’t wrong … but the Iron Bull wasn’t ready. To take up the Qun again, he had to give up Morvoren; to go back to her, he had to admit that he had already given up the Qun. 

Dorian shook his head, sighing. “I see you’re still all tangled up in that great brain of yours. Are you waiting for lightning to strike, a sign from somewhere outside yourself that will tell you the one true answer that will set your mind at rest for good? Because that isn’t coming. You know that. But you’ve lived your life so long under a set of guidelines that fundamentally tell you just what to do in every circumstance, and now you’re afraid to make your own decision, because you never really learned how.”

It was an accurate statement of the situation, but it made the Iron Bull feel inadequate. 

“I won’t make you admit that I’m right,” Dorian said, smiling a little. “But I am going to make you decide. I’m not leaving here until you do … or until nightfall. When the sun sets, I’m going to Ren and telling her you chose the Qun if you haven’t made your own decision by then.”

“You can’t do that!”

Dorian’s eyes were ice again, his face practically chiseled in marble. “Then choose.”

The Iron Bull knew what he wanted; he wanted his _kadan_ with a fierce and desperate hunger. But he had been raised to believe that giving in to what you wanted rather than maintaining a focus on your duty was weakness; that it endangered everyone around you. It was hard to let go of that training.

On the other hand, being with Morvoren had saved both their lives on a number of occasions; it had, in the end, saved the world. He knew without ego that she would never have become the Inquisitor that she had been without his influence. But the Qun had sent him to her—getting close to the Inquisition had been his orders. So that had been duty and inclination working together. This was merely the latter.

He growled softly to himself in frustration. It would have been so much easier if he had had a clear idea of where his duty lay, what his responsibilities were. Having none should have been freeing, and instead, it was this terrible burden of emptiness lying on his shoulders. He had been raised to believe a man’s life shouldn’t be empty, that there should be a purpose to everything he did. Was love purpose enough? The Qun would say no. But he was no longer of the Qun, at least, not entirely. So the answer was his own to create.

Dorian seemed to sense that he had come to a crossroads, because he looked up inquiringly. “Are you ready to choose?”  
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  
Ren stepped out of the house, crossing her arms over her chest as the wind struck her. It was growing chillier; autumn was coming. Soon it would be time to bank the walls and shutter the windows and build the woodpile up high. Farther down by the shore, she could hear hammering and an occasional shout and crash as the Chargers felled trees and began building their own huts for the winter. They had decided that whatever the Iron Bull was going to do, they were settling in for a winter on the Storm Coast. 

Their former camp, from before they had joined the Inquisition, had been picked over and dismantled by those who had come since, so they were starting afresh, but they were working together, and well organized. Rocky was in charge of construction, Dalish in charge of personnel, and Krem was running the business, taking contracts and selecting teams to send out. The loss of Grim had been a blow, but he had never been much of a talker, so the hole he left behind was slowly filling in.

Ren supposed she should give some thought to how she would make the time pass during the winter, other than hunting and trapping and chopping wood. Krem would give her work if she needed some, but even with that, a lot of long, lonely nights lay ahead of her.

She had chosen not to go after the Iron Bull; whatever decisions he made, she wanted them made without her input, or any chance she could influence them. But she missed him. Without him she was chilled to the bone in a way even the wind couldn’t manage.

The sun was sliding down the sky, bright orange and gold, sending streaks of color out in all directions. Ren supposed it was pretty. She ought to notice. Going forward, she would have to force herself to do things like get out of the house and spend time with people and notice pretty sights—if she had to get used to life alone, she might as well make a good job of it.

She supposed she could always go back to the Inquisition. Morris would be happy to give her as much work as she wanted. But to fight alone, after so long? 

“ _Kadan_?”

The word was soft, almost blown away by the wind. But she heard it, and she turned to find him standing there, looking at her with that single eye.

Ren could feel tears spring to her own eyes, not caused by the bite of the wind. A thousand things came to her mind to say—soft, loving things; witty, biting things; sharp, angry things. But in the end, she couldn’t work a single word past the lump in her throat. She just looked at him.

“I know you didn’t kill Gatt,” he said in a rush, his voice hoarse. “Part of me knew it all along.” 

She nodded. “I know.” Ren could barely hear her own voice.

“I shouldn’t have needed Grim to confess, but I—I used Gatt to … run. I said I was thinking, trying to return to the Qun, but I was hiding. I was afraid I couldn’t be one thing or the other, so I refused to be anything.”

“And now?”

“Now I know I can’t be one thing or the other … but I’m ready to try to be both, somehow.” He smiled. “My old tama used to say I wasn’t like any child she ever raised. Maybe she was right; maybe I’m unique amongst my kind. In any case, I’m going to try to live by the Qun as I understand it, as much as I can … but with you. If … if you’ll have me back after what I did.”

Privately, Ren wondered how that would work; she was skeptical about his ability to adapt the Qun to the realities of life in the Andrastean south. But that was kind of what he had done as an embedded spy, and his interpretation of the Qun seemed to be a rather flowery, romantic version anyway, so maybe he could. She was willing to help him as much as she could, as long as he was making this exploration at her side.

Finally, she found her voice. “I need you, Ashkaari. Whatever you do, don’t ever leave me again. Please.”

Relief spread over his face, and he came to her, lifting her in his arms, holding her tight against him.

Above their heads, a dragon wheeled, barely visible in the gathering shadows of dusk, and its roar reverberated across the sky. Ren and the Iron Bull grinned at each other, the look a promise that together, they would slay many dragons yet to come.


	24. Your Iron Bull

Ren sat with Dorian in the tavern in the village. It was a rude, rustic structure, and the ale they offered was thick and bitter. Dorian made a face with every swallow.

“What will you do now?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “Go back to Skyhold, at least for now. If I leave the Inquisition, I have to go home, and I’m … not sure I’m ready.” With a bit of his typical Dorian insouciance, he smiled. “And most certainly they are not ready for me.”

“Is anyone?”

His smile widened. “You were, my friend.”

“Yes.” Ren nodded. “And you were right where I needed you, always. I promise to be there for you, whenever you need me.”

Dorian reached for her hand, squeezing it. “Thank you. You’ll pardon me, I hope, if I say that I wish never to have to ask.” He looked around, giving an exaggerated shudder. “Certainly I would hate to be the thing that drew you away from this bucolic bliss of yours.”

Ren shrugged. “It’s not so bad once you get used to it.”

“Please. It’s horrifiying. But it suits you, and your Iron Bull.”

“I think I’ll take that as a compliment,” she said wryly.

“As you should.”

“And Morris? Is he ready for you to return to your homeland?”

Dorian nodded, his eyes sad. “I think he is. My presence in Skyhold reminds us both of things that might have been and will not be, and I believe he would like to feel free to move on. I have told him that he is, but naturally it isn’t as easy as it would be if I were not there. So that, by itself, may end in being the catalyst for my departure.”

“You’ll let me know before you leave?”

“Of course. I will stop by and catch the two of you in a terribly compromising position.”

“I’m not sure there are any positions the Iron Bull would find compromising.”

“Well, find one, please, before my return.”

Ren reached across the table and hugged her friend. “I’m going to miss you.”

“And I you, my dear friend.  
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  
“The Iron Bull, you feel lighter.”

“Do I, kid?” The bait bobbed up and down on the water, the fish not biting today. The Iron Bull enjoyed fishing—pitting your skill and patience against the wiliness of a species that barely knew you existed. Also, it made you look like you were doing something when you weren’t, so it was useful in spying … and gave you a lot of time to think. He was content to be alone with his thoughts now that he had them in some kind of order—or he would have been if Cole hadn’t been sitting next to him, popping up with his odd observations every time things went quiet.

“You left the darkness in the Deep Roads.”

“It’s where it belongs.”

“But there’s still some inside you.” Cole tilted his head to the side. “Do you want to get rid of it?”

The Iron Bull shook his head. “Nope. Everyone needs a little darkness. Otherwise, how do you appreciate the light?”

Cole thought of that for a moment, watching his empty hook floating on the surface of the water. He hadn’t been able to bait it at all, too worried about the feelings of the worm. “Yes. I think you’re right. But I want to help people get rid of their darkness. How do I do that if they need to keep it?”

“The trick is knowing how much to leave. Some people need more of it than others.” Dorian clung to the darkness inside him, the magnetism and repulsion of his homeland, the need for his father’s love and approval and the anger that he had never earned it, holding those emotions close to him, wrapping himself in them like a silk robe. Morvoren, on the other hand, put her darkness away and moved on with her life as though it didn’t exist. In many people, that would have meant it would all boil to the surface eventually, but she went on peacefully, worrying about the present and leaving the past and the future largely to take care of themselves.

“She was very dark without you, The Iron Bull,” Cole told him.

“I know she was.” He’d be making that up to her for a long time.

“But she is lighter now, too, like the sun.”

“Yeah. She is.” It made the Iron Bull smile to think he had made her that happy. “What are you gonna do now, kid?”

“I don’t know. Go back to Skyhold. I …” Cole hesitated. “I am learning about music, and how it can help all by itself. Do you know that listening to a familiar song can make someone feel as though they are a child again?”

“Yeah, that’s basic spycraft.”

“Maryden liked to make them think about a time when they were sad, but there’s a minstrel who plays at the Haven’s Rest who makes people think about being happy. They need less help when she’s playing.”

“Oh? This minstrel got a name?”

“Lizette.”

The softness in the kid’s tone was a dead giveaway, and the Iron Bull smothered his smile.

“Is her name funny, The Iron Bull?”

“No, kid.”

“But you want to laugh.”

“I want to smile. It’s a different thing.”

“Because I made you happy.”

“Yeah.”

Cole nodded. “Then I helped.”

The Iron Bull paused, and then he nodded, too. “Yeah, kid, you did. You helped a lot.” He gave Cole a sidelong glance. “Thanks.”

The spirit-boy frowned, not used to being thanked. “That feels nice.”

“Usually it does.”

“Then … thank you, too.”

The Iron Bull laughed. “That’s not usually the way it works … but I’ll take it.”  
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  
He paused on the trail up the mountain. “You sure you want to go through with this, _kadan_? We can turn back if you want.”

Ren laughed at him. “We could not.”

“Well, no … but it sounded like the thing I’m supposed to say.”

“We’ve never been people who said the things we were supposed to to one another—let’s not start now.”

“Works for me. You ready to do this, then?”

“As ready as you are.”

“Oh, I’m ready.” He grinned at her, wiggling his eyebrows.

Ren shook her head. “We’ve got to kill the dragon first. No time to get distracted beforehand.”

“Then stop being distracting.” He reached out, grabbing her by the waist and pulling her against him. Ren lifted herself on her toes as his mouth came down, and they kissed long and heatedly. 

She pulled away, breathing hard. “Let’s go.”

They hurried the rest of the way up the mountain. The dragon was crying out as they approached, watching them warily from the circle of stones where it kept its hoard. When it thought they were close enough, it sent a jet of fire in their direction. Ren and the Iron Bull threw themselves out of the way of the flames, splitting up to approach the dragon from different directions. As soon as she was in range, Ren raised her hand with the Anchor in it high above her head, activating the power and aiming it at the dragon. She knew from experience that the dragon would be sickened and disoriented after that long enough that the Iron Bull could come in from the other side and attack the wing, keeping the dragon grounded and hopefully preventing the whirlwind motion that came from the beating of the giant wings.

The dragon shrieked in pain, spinning toward the Iron Bull. Ren climbed up the tail, steadying herself with one hand while she drew a dagger with the other.

Beneath her, the skin was smooth, the individual scales shining in the sunlight. She found a space between two vertebra, pried up a scale, and sank the dagger into the skin, putting all her force behind it.

The great beast reared, but Ren kept her hold on the dagger, which was buried deeply in the body. It worked itself out little by little, and Ren slid down the back, letting the dagger score its way along the skin in the process, although the scales kept it from digging in too deep or doing much damage beyond irritating the dragon.

As she hit the ground, rolling quickly to the side and getting to her feet, she saw that the Iron Bull had taken advantage of the dragon rearing to hack into its chest and underbelly several times with his massive axe. Dragon’s blood, steaming and spicy, spattered him and the ground all around him.

They kept that up, staying on opposite sides, wearing down its resistance one by one, keeping the dragon moving trying to catch whichever one was injuring it at the time, until finally the blood loss sapped its strength and agility and Ren was able to climb the long neck, inching her way up bit by bit until she reached the head and could shove her dagger through its eye socket and into its brain.

The dragon reared once more, as she hung grimly on, and then the head sank slowly to the ground. Ren rode it all the way down, and was plucked off at the bottom into the hungry waiting arms of her lover. They kissed feverishly, both of them excited by the fighting and the kill and the proximity to each other. As the Iron Bull pushed and tugged at her clothes to get them out of the way, Ren licked her way across his stomach and chest, his sweat and the dragon’s blood mingling in a heady cocktail.

He got her naked and arranged her on the dragon’s still-warm back, looking at her with a fire in his single eye that had her moaning and reaching for him. And then he was there, filling her, thrusting desperately, his mouth at her ear and her neck, hands cradling the back of her head so that it didn’t bounce. Ren moved wildly with him, and it wasn’t long before they were both crying out at the peak of their pleasure.

A long time later, with the sun beginning to go down and the air cooling with the approaching darkness, they got up and collected their clothes. The Iron Bull held her tenderly against him. “I love you, _kadan_.”

“I love you, too.” She smiled at him. “You know where we can find another dragon?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next story in this series, "Dragon Through the Looking Glass", begins posting next Thursday. Thanks for reading!


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